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By Rev. J. F. RICHMOND, 

AUTHOR OF "NEW YORK AND ITS INSTITUTIONS. 



If man is not rising upward to be an angel, he is sinking 
downward to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. 

Coleridge. 



ILLUSTRATED. 



New Voj^k : 
NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

pINCINNATI : 

HITCHCOCK & WALDEN, 
1815. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 






PREFACE 



mAN occupies the foremost rank among 
terrestrial tribes, and is strangely linked 
to all the past and to every thing yet to come. 
Nothing beneath is to him unimportant, while 
above stretches a chain of golden links lost 
only in the heights of Infinitude. His fertile 
nature he is called to study and cultivate. One 
has well said: " Those advantages peculiar to 
man seem to have been furnished him in view 
of his moral and intellectual natures. Among 
these Religion and Science stand forth with 
greatest prominence ; the first adapted to his 
moral, the second to his intellectual constitu- 
tion. These two natures of man are intimately 
blended in their origin, and should keep pace 
with each other in their development. He who 
neglects the cultivation of his moral feelings 
circumscribes the exercise of his intellect. He 
who neglects the intellect will be a dwarf in 
religion. He who cultivates both will by this 



8 Preface. 

means facilitate the improvement of each, and 
may shine both in the world of intellect and 
of morals." 

All minds are attracted by the beautiful, the 
brilliant, and what they esteem valuable. The 
untutored savage listens attentively to the roar 
of the cataract and the storm, and sees beauty in 
the crystal, the sunset, and the cloud. Civilized 
man revels in the esthetic, and is proud of his 
substantial accumulations. He searches the do- 
main of earth to find its beauties and luxuries, 
and harrows its sides for its enduring treasures. 
If man could be made to see that there are beau- 
ties transcending the landscape, the arch, the 
pyramid ; pleasures surpassing those of sense ; 
gold more valuable than that of Ophir and Cal- 
ifornia ; diamonds outshining the products of 
Golconda and Peru ; if he could be made to feel 
that in himself the Creator has concentrated 
more of wealth than the material universe con- 
tains — that he is an epitome of nature, of time, 
and of eternity — a great point in his elevation 
would be secured. In the hope of in some meas- 
ure inculcating this great lesson this volume has 
been prepared. J. F. Richmond. 

Mount Kisco,- N. T., March 1, 1873. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PRECIOUS STONES. 

Their Natural Origin — Highly Esteemed by the Ancient 
Egyptians, Grecians, Eomans, Hindoos, and others — The He- 
brews Prized them — List and Description of the Precious 
Stones — The Diamond — No Mine Discovered — "Where Pound 
— Golconda — Borneo — United States — Peru — South Africa — 
Methods of Search for the Gem — The Processes of Pormation 
a Mystery Page 13 

CHAPTER II. 

BURIED DIAMONDS. 

The Grosser Metals more Valuable than the Precious — The 
Real Diamond — The "World a vast Diamond Pield — Buried 
Gems — Dignity of Toil — Not Bury the Mind in the Dust — 
Untoward Circumstances cannot prevent Progress or Useful- 
ness — A Eeal Gem may have a Coarse Setting — Diamonds 
Voluntarily Buried — Examples 32 

CHAPTER III. 

JEWELS IN DISGUISE. 

A Gentleman in Disguise — Masked Jewels — Man anywhere 
and always a Gem — Standards of Excellence — Drunkard not 
a Complete Wreck — Examples of Recovery — The Miser a 



10 Contents. 

Disguised Jewel — Historic Examples — Pollok's Description — A 
Miser the most Hopeless Character in the "World — The Fallen 
"Woman — The Lady of Fashion — Appeal to the Header. ... 51 

CHAPTER IT. 

POLISHING ROUGH DIAMONDS. 

The Process of Polishing a Diamond — The Moral Diamond, 
like the Natural, requires Polish — Examples of DuU Children, 
Newton, Barrows, Swift, Clarke, Chalmers, Scott, Sheridan, 
Goldsmith, Alfieri, Clyde, Hugh Miller, and others — How the 
Dunces became Illustrious — Became Conscious of Power — 
Newton's Fortunate Kick--Curran, the Irish Orator — Never 
too Old to Learn — Application makes Men — Self-taught Men: 
Dempster, Nott, Alfieri, Hitchcock, Irving — Late Scholarship — 
Scholars Involved in other Pursuits — Unbending Purpose to 
Excel — Advanced Minds Disparaged — Toils and Rewards of 
Authors — Encouragement for Touth hitherto Neglected — Cult- 
ure an Abiding Treasure 74 

CHAPTER V. 

BRILLIANTS. 

Different Forms of Cutting the Diamond — Varieties of Mind 
— What is Genius? — Precocious Children — Early Brilliancy: 
Henry, Hannah More, Watson, Voltaire, Tyng, Goethe, Hall, 
Pascal, Newton, Burke, Calvin, Stillingfleet, Grace Aguilar, 
Melanchthon, Byron, Pope, Macaulay, Bryant — Precocity not 
the Prelude to Early Death — Causes of Early Death — Prema- 
turely Brilliant Children not Understood : Petrarch, Alfieri, - 
Pascal — A Tale of King Arthur — Other Tors — Mental Rapid- 
ity, Newton, M'Clintock, Safford— Tenacious Memory — Not all 
Brilliants 98 

CHAPTER VI. 

DIAMONDS OF THE FIRST WATER. 

Methods for Expressing Quality — Quality of a Diamond 
Cannot be Improved — World of Mind Transcends that of Mat- 



Contents. 1 1 

ter — Discolored Condition of Moral G-em — Downward Tend- 
ency — No Fear of Evil — Remedy Needed and Provided — A 
Purified Soul a "Wondrous Achievement — Methods by which 
the Father seeks to Recover Souls — The Sailor, Farmer. 
Countryman, Man in Connecticut, Col. Gardiner — Christianity 
among the Fiji Islanders — Finest Polish of Soul not Obtained 
in First Transformation — Illustration from History of the Koh- 
i-noor — Endless Progress of Mind 120 

CHAPTER VII. 

SECLUDED JEWELS. 

The Relation of Great and Small Things in Matter, Intellect, 
and Morals — Obscure Persons Useful and Powerful — Mothers' 
Influence — Home — Sick-room — A Mother's Toil in Obscurity 
Important and Permanent in Results — A Young Mother in 
New York — "Woman's Influence in other Relations — Domestic 
Infelicities — Suitable Marriage no Obstacle to High Attain- 
ments — Heroism of a Young Wife — La Fayette's Wife — Lu- 
ther's "Lord Kate"— Sir William Hamilton's Wife— Fortitude 
of Woman — An Angel of Mercy — Gems in Hovels of Pov- 
erty — Daughter of a French Prisoner — Gustavus III. and the 
Poor Girl — Gem in a New England School — The Sea-Cap- 
tain — The Chimney-Sweep — Be Modest in Expressing Opinions 
of Others 144 

CHAPTER YTII. 

VALUE OP TEE DIAMOND. 

No Invariable Value— The Regent— The Mattan— The Soul- 
Diamond — How its Value is Estimated — Are Souls of Equal 
Value? — Common Origin — Treated Alike in Nature, Providence, 
Redemption — Diversified Talents made Useful — Too Early to 
Conclude Souls not of Equal Value — The Great Value of the 
Soul Evinced in the Energy of its Nature, in its Earthly 
Prowess, Genius, Memory, Affection, Power of Commun- 
ion with God, its Longing for Immortality — The Jewel of 
Jewels 115 



12 Contents. 

CHAPTER IX. 

LOST DIAMONDS. 

Diamonds Lost by Plunder — The Soul-Diamond a Gem of 
such Wondrous Qualities that its Loss a Momentous Consid- 
eration — Disordered State of Globe— Man Principal Sufferer — 
Brilliant in Deepest Moral Perversions — Voltaire — Byron — 
Author of "Beautiful Snow" — Eugene Aram— Ruloff— Appeal 
to Eeader — The Soul Essentially Sensitive — Its Power of En- 
durance — The Dreadful Awakening of the Profligate — Louis 
XL of France— Philip III. of Spain— Hobbes— John Ean- 
dolph — Altamont — An Appalling Picture 199 

CHAPTER X. 

HOW TO PKESERVE JEWELS. 

The Safety of Interests Guarded according to their Value — 
Treasures of the English Crown in the Tower — Vaults for 
Keeping Valuables in New York — Recklessness in Relation to 
the Greatest Jewels — Parental Influence — Begins Early — In- 
herited Tendencies — Extract from Bushnell — Home Culture — 
Clergymen's Children — Power of Transmitted Tendencies a 
Motive to Piety — Sanctified Culture to Begin at Birth — Danger 
of Intrusting Jewels to the Care of Others — Our Piety too 
Defective for Large Success — The Art of "Winning Souls — The 
Loftiness and Responsibility of Our Calling 223 



+ ♦ » 



Diamond Gulch Frontispiece. 

Wore at Sorting-Table in Diamond Diggings. . .To face 28 

Koh-i-noor, the Queen op English Jewels To face 140 

Laborers at "Work in Colesberg Kopje, South 

Africa To face 200 






DIAMONDS, 
UNPOLISHED AND POLISHED. 




CHAPTER I. 

PRECIOUS STONES. 

H ROUGH her mines nature fur- 
nishes a variety of hard and showy 
substances which have in all ages 
attracted attention among the curi- 
ous, the wealthy, and the scientific. Had 
k these precious stones existed in sufficient 
abundance the great could have erected 
courtly palaces that would have survived 
the waste of unnumbered years ; but with 
most of the varieties the supply is so limited 
that they must ever remain little else than ob- 
jects of curiosity. Nearly all precious stones are 
transparent or translucent, and are formed of 
simple elements of nature or of inorganic com- 
pounds, crystallized. They probably once ex- 



14 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

isted in a fluid state, and solidified by gradual 
processes. Their inward structure presents a 
series of thin plates, or coats, one over the 
other, similar to metallic substances which were 
once fluid. Many of them are characterized by 
a variety of brilliant colors, which may have 
been imparted by some mineral substance or 
earthly exhalation while in their hardening 
state, before their lamina were closed. This 
appears the more probable because many col- 
ored gems are found in close proximity to me- 
tallic veins, and from the fact that they often 
lose their color when long subjected to the in- 
fluence of intense heat. 

With all the ancient nations precious stones 
constituted an important part of their wealth, 
and were an essential and highly-prized orna- 
ment of distinguished persons, particularly of 
kings. The ancient Egyptians possessed stores 
of this kind of treasure, and at the present time 
precious stones are often exhumed from the 
mummy-pits and cemeteries of that interesting 
people. 

In the early literature of Greece we find 
numerous traces of precious stones. Homer 
speaks of the shining gems in the ear-rings of 



Precious Stones. 15 

Juno. Plato believed that precious stones were 
produced by the vivifying spirit abiding in the 
stars, and at a later period a common notion 
prevailed that some rare stones possessed the 
power of generating others. From these and 
other theories taught by their most learned men, 
the Greeks attributed nearly every variety of 
magic to precious stones. 

"When the Romans conquered Greece and 
Egypt they took home with them the taste for 
precious stones, and carried it to a stupendous 
pitch, the opulent and patrician classes vieing 
with each other in the extravagant use of jew- 
els. Caesar is said to have paid a sum equal to 
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a 
single pearl. In later periods of Roman his- 
tory we find numberless instances of the esti- 
mation in which jewels were held. In the time 
of the Ptolemies the Egyptians used them in 
profusion for ornamenting arms, drinking-cups, 
and the altars of the gods. Caligula is said to 
have adorned his horse with a collar of pearls ; 
the shoes of Heliogabalus were studded with 
gems, and the statues of the gods had eyes of 
precious stones." Gems and rare stones are 
mentioned in the mythology of the Hindoos ; 



16 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

they have been found in the buried ruins of 
Herculaneum and Pompeii ; they were also 
found by the Spaniards in the possession of the 
native Mexicans and Peruvians in America. 
We therefore conclude that all heathen nations, 
and nearly all classes of persons, have highly 
prized them. 

The ancient Hebrews held them in high es- 
teem, as we learn from numerous allusions and 
paragraphs of Old Testament history. The 
breastplate of the high-priest, worn on public 
occasions, was a rich and ingeniously wrought 
ornament, containing twelve precious stones, 
appropriately inscribed, set in gold. Precious 
stones glistened in the diadem of their kings ; 
they were set in rings and worn by wealthy 
noblemen, and made a matter of traffic by the 
merchants. They were obtained chiefly from 
India and Arabia. The Queen of Sheba 
brought presents to Solomon of "spices, gold, 
and precious stones." The navy of Hiram, 
king of Tyre, " brought gold from Ophir," and 
also "precious stones." How many varieties 
were then known we shall not attempt to de- 
cide. Job mentions nine, including the crystal, 
the coral, and the pearl. The breastplate of 



Precious Stones. ij 

the high priest contained twelve, and twelve are 
also mentioned by St. John as foundations in 
the walls of the New Jerusalem. Several of 
those mentioned, however, are of the same 
stone, (chalcedony,) differing simply in their 
shades of coloring ; and some others may be 
grouped together, two and two, as identical, ex- 
cept in their variations of color. The list, how- 
ever, comprises most of the precious stones of 
modern times, and, we may suppose, of the 
world. 

For the benefit of the youthful reader, and 
such as have not given the subject particular 
attention, we insert a partial list of the precious 
stones, with some account of their qualities and 
uses. 

The Jasper is a variety of opaque, impure 
quartz, of red, yellow, or other dull color, but 
capable of high polish. It was wrought by the 
ancients into numerous gems and ornaments, 
and it is still used in making vases, seals, and 
snuff-boxes. 

The Sapphire is pure crystallized alumina, 
and is the second hardest substance in nature. 
It is a blue, transparent Crystal. Inferior varie- 
ties of sapphire are found in many places in the 



1 8 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

United States. When this stone is not of a 
blue color it is known by other names. The 
bright-red sapphire is known as the oriental 
ruby, and is a gem of great beauty and value. 
The largest ever known was brought from 
China, and was some years ago placed in the 
imperial crown of Russia. When the sapphire 
is yellow it is known as orie?ital topaz ; when 
green, as oriental emerald ; when violet, as ori- 
ental amethyst ; and when hair-brown, as ada- 
mantine spar. The common ruby is a variety 
of the spinel. 

The Chalcedony is a translucent, massive 
variety of quartz, usually of a pale-grayish, 
blneish, or light-brown shade, and has a luster 
resembling wax. The stalactites in caves are 
icicles of chalcedony hanging from the roof of 
the cavern. Agate is a variety of chalcedony 
with different colors arranged in stripes or 
layers, and sometimes contains spots in ground 
colors, and even figures. 

The Carnelian, identical with sardius and 
sardonyx, is a silicious, flesh-colored, semi- 
transparent gem, akin to the chalcedony. It is 
much used in common jewelry in all countries, 
and by the Japanese in making beads. 



Precious Stones. 19 

The Chrysoprase is a translucent, flinty 
quartz of an apple-green or greenish-golden 
color, and is sometimes spotted. It is green- 
colored chalcedony, with very little luster. 
Some of the ancients believed it contained the 
power of healing disease. 

The Onyx is another variety of the chalced- 
ony, consisting of parallel layers of different 
shades of color, and is much used in making 
cameos. A grayish-red chalcedony is known 
as sard. There is also a greenish-gray trans- 
lucent chalcedony, obtained from Ceylon and 
Malabar, called cat's eye, which is a gem of con- 
siderable value. 

The Chrysolite, composed of silica, magne- 
sia, and iron, is found generally in prismatic 
form, varying in color from pale-green to bottle- 
green, and sometimes of a yellow or of a wine 
color, and at times colorless. Mineralogists 
now suppose the topaz of the ancients to be 
identical with the chrysolite of the moderns. 

The Emerald is a green or bluish-green six- 
sided prism, composed of silica, alumina, and 
glucina. It is identical with the beryl, except 
differing slightly in color. The finest emeralds 
come from Grenada ; large and coarse sped- 



20 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

mens are also found in Siberia. The finest 
beryls are obtained from Hindustan and Brazil. 

The Jacinth is a species of zircon, a hard, 
transparent, hyacinthine stone composed of 
zirconia and silica. The hyacinth is red, and 
the other varieties are brown or gray, and some- 
times shading into yellow. The jacinth is be- 
lieved to be identical with the ancient ligure. 

The Amethyst is usually transparent quartz, 
of a violet-blue color, found in six-sided crys- 
talline form, and sometimes in pebble shape. 
The specimens obtained from India were most 
prized by the ancients. Some of inferior qual- 
ity were also obtained from Arabia and Syria. 
They believed this stone a preservative against 
the power of intoxication. 

The Carbuncle is composed of silica, alu- 
mina, and lime, with oxide of iron, and is conse- 
quently a deep red-colored gem, with a mixture 
of scarlet. The Greeks called it anthrax, on 
account of its resemblance to a live coal. It is 
usually found pure in an angular form, and 
when held between the eye and the sun it ex- 
actly resembles a burning coal. This gem is 
identical with the modern garnet, which is 
found in a variety of colors. 



Precious Stones. 21 

The Opal is composed chiefly of silex, and 
is found in three varieties : the precious opal ex- 
hibits a peculiar play of delicate tints ; tine fire 
opal is less transparent, with colors like the red 
and yellow of flame ; the common opal exhibits 
a kind of milky appearance. 

The Tourmaline is a three-sided or six- 
sided prism, terminated by three-sided pyra- 
mids. It is found in colors of black, brown, 
blue, green, and red. 

We should, perhaps, add to these the Pearl, 
which is a gem formed by nature in the shells 
of several species of mollusks, particularly the 
pearl oyster. It is obtained from the bed of 
rivers and the sea at various places in Asia, 
Europe, and America. The pearl is composed 
of the carbonate of lime interstratified with 
animal membranes. It is of a hard, smooth, 
lustrous substance, and of a silvery or bluish- 
white color. 

The natives of Ceylon carry on an extensive 
business in the pearl fisheries, and are probably 
the most dexterous men in the world engaged 
in this perilous business. They can remain 
under water several minutes without breathing, 
and can handle a rope and pick up the smallest 



22 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

objects with their toes as well we can with our 
fingers. 

But of all the precious stones and minerals 
of the world the Diamond is the hardest, most 
brilliant, and valuable. It was for many ages 
supposed to be indestructible by fire, or any 
other element or agency known to man. It is 
not acted upon by acids or alkalies, and if pro- 
tected from the action of the atmosphere may 
be heated to whiteness without injury. Mod- 
ern chemistry has, however, ascertained that if 
exposed to the air at a temperature a little be- 
low that required to melt silver, it is burned or 
dissipated in the form of carbonic acid gas. In 
substance it is carbon in its purest and most 
perfect state of crystallization. The perfect 
form of this crystal, and that into which many 
are converted by cleavage, is that of two four- 
sided pyramids joined at their bases, (octahe- 
dron.) The faces of many of these gems when 
found are rounded, presenting a convex surface, 
and the edges are often curved. Diamonds are 
found in a variety of colors, as well as colorless 
and perfectly transparent. The latter are most 
esteemed, and, on account of their resemblance 
to pure water, are styled " diamonds of the first 



Precious Stones. 23 

water." Some are tinted like the rose, and if 
transparent, these are much prized. Next to 
the rose a green-colored diamond is considered 
most valuable. A yellow, an orange, a cinna- 
mon, a blue, or a black, is less esteemed. 

At precisely what period the diamond was 
first discovered, or where it came to be first 
prized, is not now easy to ascertain. The term 
diamond occurs in our English translation of 
the Bible four times — twice in the book of 
Exodus, once in Jeremiah, and once in Ezekiel ; 
but whether the original Hebrew word (yaha- 
lom) in Exodus or (shamir) in Jeremiah signi- 
fied the gem now recognized as the diamond, 
or the jasper, the onyx, the emerald, or some 
other variety of hard, brilliant stone, is a matter 
over which critics have greatly differed, and 
about which no one can be entirely certain. It 
is extremely doubtful whether the diamond was 
known in the days of Moses, and, on account of 
the difficulty of engraving it, whether it could 
have been used in the breastplate of the high- 
priest. It was long known in Asia before it 
was discovered in any other quarter of the 
globe ; and the celebrated diamond known as 
the Koh-i-noor, or " Mountain of Light," owned 



24 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

by the Queen of England, is said to have a well- 
defined history running back beyond the Chris- 
tian era. The art of cutting and polishing dia- 
monds probably originated in Asia at an early 
period, but it was not introduced into Europe 
until about the middle of the fifteenth century. 

Properly speaking, no diamond mines have 
ever been discovered. The gems are found in 
alluvial deposits, scattered among pebbles, and 
often associated with gold. They have drifted 
from their original homes, and often lie exposed 
on the banks of rivers. One of the most valu- 
able diamonds found in the United States was 
picked up by a laborer, in 1856, on the banks of 
the James River, opposite the city of Rich- 
mond. Sometimes they are found buried 
twenty or thirty feet in the soil, concealed by 
half a dozen distinct alluvial strata, as in the 
island of Borneo. 

The famous diamond fields of Golconda in 
Hindustan seem to have furnished for many 
years all the diamonds of the world. The gems 
were not as large as some specimens since ob- 
tained in other countries, but excelled in hard- 
ness and brilliancy. These mines have become 
unproductive, and are now generally abandoned, 



Precious Stones. 25 

Rich diamonds have been obtained from the 
island of Borneo, the largest of which fell into 
the hands of the Sultan of Mattan, and weighs 
three hundred and sixty-seven carats. It is 
valued at several million dollars. Diamonds 
have been found also in Bengal, in the gold 
regions of Siberia, and a few in Georgia, North 
Carolina, and Virginia. A new excitement 
has sprung up in our country during the pres- 
ent year (1872) in relation to the discovery of 
diamonds on the Rio Colorado, Chiquito River, 
California. A company has recently been or- 
ganized with a capital often million dollars, and 
many rich gems are already reported to have 
been found, one of which weighs over one hun- 
dred carats. If the field is half as rich as re- 
ported, the United States, already famous in 
the abundance of their mineral harvests, will be 
still more distinguished.* 

About 1730 the celebrated diamond field at 
Serro do Frio, in Brazil, was discovered. The 
region was known as a gold district, and slaves 
were compelled to search for that metal. They 
occasionally found bright stones, which were 
for the most part thrown away. At length 
* This mine has since proved an ingenious swindle. 



26 Diamonds, Unpolished mid Polished. 

some one, more curious than the rest, pre- 
served a few, and showed them to the governor- 
general of the mines, who had previously spent 
some time in the East Indies. He suspected 
that they were diamonds. The Portuguese gov- 
ernment sent a minister to Holland with speci- 
mens to ascertain their real value, and, after 
bearing a critical test, they were pronounced 
very fine diamonds. A new interest was sud- 
denly manifested toward Brazil. The Portu- 
guese government dispatched the Rio Janeiro 
fleet in search of the precious gems, and in 
1732 it returned with eleven hundred and forty- 
six ounces, which so overstocked the market as 
to nearly ruin the old dealers of Europe. From 
1730 to 1 8 14 there was an average yield of 
thirty-six thousand carats per annum. It has 
since been much increased. From ten thou- 
sand to twenty thousand persons have for many 
years found employment and subsistence around 
these diamond fields, which have been worked 
by government and by private parties and com- 
panies for one hundred and forty-two years, and 
are still productive. The gems are found in a 
species of gravel, which is dug up and taken to 
a shed for washing. Through the center of this 



Precious Stones. 27 

shed a stream of water is conducted, on one 
side of which is placed a number of sloping 
troughs about three feet wide, communicating 
with the stream at one end. About a bushel 
of this gravel is placed in a trough, the water 
let on to carry away the mud, the large stones 
are thrown out, after which the search for the 
diamonds begins. When this work was per- 
formed by slaves an overseer was stationed 
near by to watch them and receive the gems. 
It was the custom to liberate a slave who found 
a diamond weighing seventeen and a half 
carats. 

A Brazilian slave was one day searching in 
the bed of a river for gems, and with an iron 
bar broke through a crust of silicious materials 
cemented by oxide of iron, and discovered a 
bed of diamonds worth fifteen hundred thou- 
sand dollars. They were carried to England, 
and the market was again so overstocked that 
many diamond merchants were ruined. The 
Brazilian diamond " Estrella do Sul " was sold 
for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars ; 
another, the " Star of the South," imported to 
France about fifteen years ago, weighed in its 
rough state two hundred and fifty-four and a 



28 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

half carats ; another, held by the King of Por- 
tugal, was at one time valued at twenty-eight 
million dollars. It weighs about eighteen hun- 
dred carats, but the genuineness of the stone 
has been questioned. 

In 1 869, diamonds were discovered on the bank 
of the Vaal River in South Africa. In 1870, a 
large gem, subsequently known as the " Star of 
South Africa," was brought into the market, 
and has since been cut into a handsome stone. 
It is now the property of the Prince of Wales, 
and is valued at thirty thousand pounds ster- 
ling. The introduction of this valuable gem 
into the civilized world produced intense ex- 
citement among treasure-seekers, and many 
thousands have flocked to South Africa in 
search of diamonds. The Vaal River flows 
through a vast sandy, stony, hilly, barren tract 
of country, till recently but little inhabited. 
Mines are now worked at different points for 
more than one hundred miles along the course 
of the river, and across a belt fully fifty miles 
wide. New places are being almost weekly 
reported. Many of the diamonds have been 
found on the copays, and along the banks of 
the ancient beds of the river. If the mine is at 




Work at Sorting-Table in Diamond Diggings. 



Precious Stones. 29 

a distance from the river the gravel and earth 
are conveyed to its banks, or the water for 
washing is carried to the mine. If water is 
taken to the mine it is placed in large tubs, 
and the gravel having been dried in the sun 
and sifted, is taken up in a sieve and washed 
from one tub to another until the earth disap- 
pears, when the residue is spread upon a table 
for minute examination. 

At the river-bank the gravel is washed in a box 
about three feet long and two feet deep, open at 
the top and at one end near the bottom, and sup- 
plied with rockers like the cradle of a child. 
In this cradle are placed two or three sieves 
several inches apart, the finest being at the bot- 
tom to retain the small stones of value. After 
placing half a bushel of gravel in the upper 
sieve one man pours on water while another 
seizes the perpendicular handle of the cradle 
and rocks it violently, continuing until the fine 
stones can be easily discovered. The sorting 
is done with great rapidity by experienced min- 
ers. An inexperienced miner will be elated 
with many beautiful crystals, but will soon find 
that they are wholly valueless. The real gem 
is not easily overlooked. " One will seem to 



30 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

stare at you," says a gentleman who has spent 
some time at the diamond field, " like a brill- 
iant eye from among its dark, lusterless asso- 
ciates. After once picking up a diamond 
among the gravel the digger will have no hesi- 
tancy in deciding what are and what are not 
these beautiful gems with as much certainty as 
in any case where two things are in question." 

By what silent processes the great Architect 
elaborates so exquisite a gem from such an un- 
sightly substance as charcoal, and transforms 
the blackest specimen of matter into the most 
transparent and brilliant, is a mystery that all 
the students of nature have been unable to 
solve. In India the diamond is found associ- 
ated with the new red sandstone, in Brazil with 
talcose schist. It belongs manifestly to the 
metamorphic group of rocks which yield gold, 
but to what particular rock none has yet been 
able to tell. If the carbon of which it is com- 
posed was ever distributed in the vegetable king- 
dom, by what means it was collected, and whether 
it came from the earth's surface, or was exhaled 
from internal carbonic vaults locked up for ages 
in the calcareous rocks, or secreted from vast 
collections of fossilized plants, is what no geolo- 



Precious Stones. 31 

gist has been able to ascertain. Composed of 
a single substance abundant in nature, the mat- 
ter of its production appears simple, yet so mys- 
terious are the processes of its formation that 
all the researches of time shed no real light on 
this interesting problem. Next to the philoso- 
pher's stone, the manufacture of genuine dia- 
monds has offered the most lucrative incentives 
to the ingenious chemist ; but though many 
eminent scholars have bent their energies in 
this direction, and have repeatedly produced 
other and more complicated forms in mineralo- 
gy, they have one and all utterly failed to solid- 
ify carbon into a diamond, and, after most pro- 
tracted and painstaking experiments, have been 
compelled to exclaim with the defeated magi- 
cians of Egypt, " Surely this is the finger of 
God!" 



32 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 




CHAPTER II. 

BURIED DIAMONDS. 

HE diamond is far from being the 
most useful substance in nature. 
Copper, lead, tin, platina, iron, sil- 
ver, gold, quicksilver, and salt are each 
turned to many more useful accounts. 
k The gross but useful metals are im- 
mensely more important to civilized so- 
ciety than those denominated "precious." 
Without the former we should have little 
convenience, culture, or happiness. We 
could neither plow, nor dig, nor prune, 
nor graft, nor mow, nor reap, nor weave, nor 
print, nor build, nor carry on, as we now do, 
any of the arts of civilization. We could have 
no convenient vehicle of travel, no steamboat, 
rail-car, or telegraph ; no foundries, factories, or 
temples ; little commerce, little progress. How 
intimately are these things connected with all 
we value and with every thing in the world 
either good or great ! 






Buried Diamonds. 33 

The diamond, however, has its uses. It is 
sometimes made into lenses for small micro- 
scopes ; its fragments, ground to powder, are 
employed in flattening and polishing other hard 
substances, and its points, on account of their 
extreme hardness, are used in perforating and 
cutting other minerals ; yet its chief value in 
every age has consisted in its beauty and brill- 
iancy as an ornament. And because it is the 
rarest, purest, and most beautiful gem of phys- 
ical nature, every-where and always esteemed, 
possessing value seldom depreciated, and a 
brilliancy never dimmed, we have thought it 
proper to introduce it in this volume as the 
symbol of another jewel with which man is in- 
vested — one infinitely more valuable than any 
gathered from the mines of nature. 

By modifying slightly a beautiful utterance 
of that gifted blind poetess of New York, 
Fanny Crosby, we have the following : 

I know of a jewel whose luster 

Is purer and brighter than gold — 
A jewel that sparkles forever, 

Whose value can never be told; 
A jewel more precious than rubies, 

Or pearls from the depths of the sea — 
A jewel, dear reader, worth keeping, 

A treasure for you and for me. 
3 



34 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

What a wonderful fact that each of us has 
been invested and charged with the keeping 
and culture of a jewel infinitely more durable 
than the diamond ; possessing a thousand facul- 
ties of thought, will, and affection, of pleasure 
and pain, and of outshining forever its brightest 
luster as does the king of day the tiniest shell ! 

We obtain enlarged views, and often reach 
important and valuable conclusions, by compar- 
ison. The world never appears so small as 
when viewed in comparison with the heavenly 
bodies. The creature never becomes so insig- 
nificant as when placed in the scale with the 
Creator. Time never seems so short as when 
contrasted with eternity ; and its moments sel- 
dom appear more valuable than when reckoned 
as sands of gold. It is therefore hoped that 
the youthful reader, at least, will gain some 
new and permanent impressions concerning 
his own importance and capabilities by a com- 
parison of these gems of matter and of mind, 
and will be deterred from sacrificing the im- 
provement of the latter for the possession of 
the former, as giddy thousands have done, dis- 
covering their sad mistake when there was left 
no place for repentance. 






Buried Diamonds. . 35 

The human soul is a jewel of rare and tran- 
scendent mold. It is invested with the most 
exquisite faculties, and is susceptible of marvel- 
ous development. It has a swift perception 
of good and evil, a keen sense of honor and 
shame, of joy and woe, and is so poised in the 
scale of being that eternal destiny hinges upon 
its choice. But this jewel, like the diamond, has 
drifted away from its original relations, and lies 
buried in strange and calamitous associations 
amid the reefs and surges of ignorance and sin. 

Probably but few of the diamonds that have 
drifted from their birthplaces have ever fallen 
into the hands of man. The chief search has 
always been along the earth's surface. Large, 
brilliant gems have probably collected between 
the reefs, and for ages have lain deeply covered 
in the bed of rivers, never to be exhumed. 
Others linger in neglected fields, and still others 
are trodden over by the ignorant or the savage, 
who never discover their real value. These 
wastes and losses are, however, unavoidable in 
the realms of physical nature. 

This world, considered intellectually and 
morally, is a vast diamond field strewn in every 
part with richest gems. Some lie waiting, 



2)6 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

glistening upon the surface. These are easily 
reached and soon gathered by the early toilers. 
Some are half buried, others quite concealed ; 
while far down, down, are strewn in wildest 
confusion and gloom myriads that can only be 
reached by immense digging, and polished by 
abundant friction. Women with talent for the 
loftiest duties of their sphere crouch in rags 
amid the desolation of hovels, and weep under 
their sorrows and wrongs. In native intellect 
they are piercing and discriminating, and could 
have ruled like Victoria. With culture and op- 
portunity they could have written like Harriet 
Beecher Stowe. They have the emotions, the 
ambitions, and affections of a Florence Night- 
ingale, but, alas ! they are buried in ignorance 
and neglect, and wasted with multiplied disap- 
pointments. Ignorant women carry the hod 
in Vienna, draw the canal-boat, like beasts of 
burden, in Holland, and in a thousand other 
places in both hemispheres perform the most 
menial field service. Given to physical labors 
only, they appear coarse and hardy to the last 
degree ; their arms are large and brawny, their 
voices coarse and harsh, while in countenance 
they exhibit little of the intellect, genius, or 



Btiried Diamonds. . y/ 

modesty of their sex. Their career is but little 
above the life of the beast. They are not 
disturbed with thoughts about choice apparel, 
beauty of complexion, or the exquisite propri- 
eties of life. Thus they live and die in stupid 
squalor who with care and culture might have 
taught the sciences, polished the minds of their 
offspring, or graced a drawing-room. 

Men are quarrying stone on Dix Island, 
digging coal in the mountains of Pennsylvania, 
and fishing in rowboats off Sandy Hook, who 
might have been professors in colleges > states- 
men, admirals, and authors. Thousands live 
and die in penury — the day-servants of their 
equals — who might easily have risen to be 
masters of estates. Many wait supinely for 
fortune to overtake them who might have found 
it by diligence and thrift. Men and women 
of transcendent gifts fill our prisons, and bury 
themselves in confusion and shame through 
the perversion and abuse of their faculties. 

There is a genuine nobility in all useful toil, 
which we would not be supposed to disparage. 
Some one must dig the coal, collect the ore, 
and scoop out the canal. Some one must clean 
the sewer, dust the carpet, sweep the chimney. 



38 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

Some one must sprinkle the street, and black 
the boots. Some one must carry the hod, 
brush away the cobweb, scour the silver, and 
scrub in the kitchen. We cannot all forever 
wear white kids and appear on dress parade. 
The race would soon perish from the earth if 
all sought to be merchants, or bankers, or spec- 
ulators, or tourists, or were given exclusively to 
literary pursuits. We need farms as much as 
cities, and factories as well as academies, and 
foundries are as useful as astronomical observ- 
atories. The world requires servants as well as 
proprietors, artisans as well as artists, laborers 
as well as men of letters. 

And there is no disgrace in a worn garment, 
a bronzed countenance, a calloused hand, or 
muscles hardened with much toil. Manual toil 
is not only a providential necessity in the world, 
but an advantage and pleasure to every well- 
governed mind. No true gentleman was ever 
ashamed to dig in his garden, or to attend to 
the duties of any legitimate business. Indeed, 
the true gentleman never asks the most menial 
to perform what he is ashamed to do himself. 
A woman is none the less a lady, no less the 
accomplished queen of the circle, because she 



B? tried Diamonds. 39 

superintends in the laundry, gives examples in 
the kitchen, and "eats not the bread of idle- 
ness." The world will never allow the names 
and deeds of Peter the Great of Russia, of 
George Washington, of Elizabeth Fry, or Flor- 
ence Nightingale to be forgotten. While 
favored with position, wealth, and culture, they 
nobly stooped — if stooping it may be called — 
to attend in person to the most laborious and 
trying duties of human life. They suffered no 
loss of dignity by familiarity with the navy 
yard, the camp, and the farm. They lost no 
beauty, no culture, no happiness, no honor, by 
visiting scenes of sadness in hospitals, in pris- 
ons, in dungeons or garrets. 

But the great crime of the masses is in allow- 
ing their minds to habitually trail in the dust 
with their bodies. Created for high and ever- 
expanding contemplations, they feed their minds 
so persistently on the dust of their daily drudg- 
ery that they gather little else, and are never 
prepared for any but an inferior place among 
those of their own craft. Man is as indolent 
in mind and body; and because it is harder to 
study and think than to perform manual toil, 
vast multitudes tamely submit to be intellect- 



40 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

ually buried diamonds, who might easily rise to 
shine among the jewels of the world. 

It is a virtue to toil patiently upon a farm, in 
a factory, a mine, or in a garret ; to live in 
plainness and sobriety ; and, when manifestly 
in the path of duty, and fully exerting one's 
best faculties, to be contented with our income 
and our surroundings. But it is a great crime 
to bury one's mind in willful ignorance, or one's 
moral power in corruption and sin. A blind or a 
hoodwinked man on the brow of a natural preci- 
pice will strain his eyes for light, and one buried 
alive will struggle to regain the surface. Yet 
unnumbered multitudes crowd the world who 
have never opened their eyes to the lofty possi- 
bilities of their being, and who refuse to be 
shocked by the disclosure of their appalling 
dangers. Intellectually, socially, and morally, 
they lie far below their proper level, empaneled 
in ignorance, poverty, and gloom, and, like the 
dead Lazarus in his rock-bound grave, make no 
effort to gain the rays of a higher sphere. 

The intellect is as manifestly for development 
and employment as the muscles. Heaven and 
earth are filled with subjects of inquiry and 
contemplation. The Creator seeks to lift the 



Buried Diamonds. 41 

thoughts of his creatures to his works and 
himself. His voice to them is : "Lift up your 
eyes on high, and behold who hath created 
these things, that bringeth out their host by 
number ; he calleth them all by their names ; 
by the greatness of his might, for that he is 
strong in power, not one faileth." " The heav- 
ens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork." " The earth, also, is 
full of thy riches." What multitudes stroll 
about the world in quest of temporary pleasure 
or profit, but never entertain one lengthened 
inquiry about the blue heavens above them, the 
earth under their feet, the momentous facts of 
their own destiny, or their relationship to the 
Ruler of the universe ! God pronounces a 
fearful "woe" on those that seek fleshly grati- 
fications, but who " regard not the work of the 
Lord, neither consider the operations of his 
hands." Yet who will number the millions, 
even in enlightened countries, who have no in- 
telligent theories concerning the revolutions of 
the earth, the action of the tides, the changes 
of the seasons, the nature and composition of 
the grosser elements ; of the nature of light, 
heat, or of electricity ; of the principles of op- 



42 Diamonds, UnpolisJied and Polished. 

tics or acoustics ; of the properties of food, 
the true uses of medicines, or a thousand other 
things that fall within the range of their daily 
observations, and in which the operations of 
the Eternal are so wondrously manifested ! 
They care as little about history as science, and, 
except their own brief experience, know nearly 
as little of time as of eternity. All these are, 
however, gifted by original endowment with 
mental abilities, and, if they would realize it, 
with abundant facilities for culture and useful- 
ness. No toil, penury, or seclusion can lock 
up mind in an enlightened age and country. 
Voltaire studied in prison, Elihu Burritt at the 
anvil, and Thurlow Weed in early life wrapped 
his shoeless feet with rags, and over the drifted 
snow scoured the neighborhood for books, 
which he read by fire-light in the sugar-camp ; 
Paul w T rote his epistles in the prison at Rome; 
Bunyan penned his " Pilgrim's Progress " and 
six other books in the Bedford Jail ; De Foe 
wrote his " Robinson Crusoe " and many polit- 
ical pamphlets in prison ; Smollett wrote his 
" Sir Lancelot Greaves " while in close confine- 
ment ; Grotius, early in the seventeenth century, 
prepared his "Annotation on the Gospels" while 



Bttried Diamonds. 43 

confined in the Castle of Loevenstein ; Boethius 
wrote his "Consolations of Philosophy" while 
imprisoned at Pavia ; Buchanan produced his 
"Paraphrase on the Psalms" while incarcerated 
in a Portuguese monastery ; Cooper wrote his 
" Purgatory of Suicide " in the Stafford Jail ; 
and Richard Baxter composed portions of his 
best works while detained in the King's Bench 
Prison. The Tower of London has been the 
theater of much literary toil and triumph. 
Within that dreary castle William Penn wrote 
his work "No Cross, no Crown;" Sir Walter 
Raleigh wrote his " History of the World ; " 
Prior his "Alma ; or, Progress of the Soul ; " and 
Elliott his treatise on "The Monarchy of Man." 
Luther, shut up in the Wartburg, spent long 
days in translating the Scriptures ; James 
Montgomery produced his first volume of po- 
etry in the prison at York Castle ; and Kossuth, 
the Hungarian patriot, mastered the English 
language during his two years' imprisonment 
at Buda. 

These examples abundantly establish the fact 
that no seclusion, toil, poverty, misfortune, or 
combination of opposing forces, can effectually 
bar up the way of progress to an ambitious and 



44 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

persevering mind. Untoward circumstances 
may temporarily delay the progress of a soul ; 
but gathering strength under defeats, it will 
eventually burst through these difficulties as 
did Samson the green withes which bound him. 
The fields of the world are also as wide for 
usefulness as for culture. Every sphere, from 
the hovel to the palace, affords scope for the 
seed and the harvest. The early Methodist 
preachers of America sometimes addressed 
weeping crowds through the grated windows 
of their temporary prisons, and though contin- 
ually persecuted and hampered with legal re- 
strictions, they every-where gathered golden 
sheaves for their Master's garner. However 
narrow may be the bounds of one's occupation, 
the limits of his acquaintance, or the range of 
his knowledge, he may still be useful. Though 
performing the most menial service in a mine, 
a factory, or on a farm, he is brought in contact 
with other minds whom he can influence and 
mold. Peter the Hermit, without learning or 
eloquence, aroused all Europe with his tears 
and earnest appeals. The words of the invalid 
confined for long years to his room find their 
way into the street. Languishing in the hos- 



Buried Diamonds. 45 

pital, or dying in a prison, one can impress on 
the minds of attendants and strangers lessons 
of wisdom that will never be forgotten. The 
conclusion is then easily reached, that if we 
want a field for culture, or " a field of labor, we 
can find it anywhere," whether blessed with 
poverty or riches, and in whatever portion of 
the earth the lines have to us fallen. 

America is said at present to afford the best 
market in the world for diamonds. And is it 
not also true, that the widest scope is here 
afforded for intellectual and moral diamonds ? 
What opportunities for men and women of 
thought and moral power ! What facilities for 
polishing diamonds are also here afforded, such 
as no other nation can boast ! And yet no fact 
is more patent than that the world every-where 
abounds with buried talent. Society groans 
continually under the burdens inflicted upon it 
by indolence and misdirected energy. 

It will not do to conclude that the ignorant, 
groveling, vicious members of the community 
were formed for nothing better ; that they pre- 
fer filth and drudgery and shame to cleanli- 
ness, respectability, independence, and honor ; 
that they prefer a prison-cell to a cheerful 



46 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

home ; to starve on the scanty wages of crime 
rather than enjoy the rewards of honest toil ; 
that to them ignorance is indeed bliss, and that 
they have gained already the loftiest objects of 
their ambition. It is not safe to conclude that 
if there is gold anywhere it will certainly burst 
forth and shine. Many rich mines have been 
long concealed, and brought to light only by 
much digging. Diamonds are often so buried in N 
corruption that their value is quite unnoticed. 
" Some years ago a lady in the streets of Bos- 
ton picked up from the side of the gutter what 
looked -like an ordinary article of jewelry. It 
was a brooch containing a large-sized stone in 
a rough setting of coarse gold. At first she 
thought of throwing it away as an unclean thing 
of little value, but concluded to cleanse it and 
use it. One evening the rays from a lamp fall- 
ing full upon it made it glisten with brightest 
light, as of a star fallen from heaven. The lady 
carried it to a lapidary, who assured her that 
the stone was a first-water brilliant of great 
value. The rough setting was a freak of its 
original owner, and the finder had, by its 
coarseness, been deceived as to the superior 
worth of the precious jewel." 



Buried Diamonds. t 47 

Does not this circumstance afford an in- 
structive lesson as to the possible value of what 
some have regarded as merely the rubbish and 
waste of society ? In examining objects we 
should do more than scan their exterior. The 
value of a diamond does not consist in the style 
of its setting. So also the value and strength 
of a mind cannot always be inferred from its 
occupation or habits, its society, or the texture 
of the garments that cover the body. Dia- 
monds in the rough are scattered over all the 
fields of this world. They thickly stud the 
filthy sinks of our great cities ; they are buried 
along all the marts of commerce ; they are con- 
cealed in the tents that whiten the desert, the 
hovels that dot the plain, and in the flashing 
palaces that adorn the metropolis ; they are 
buried in asylums, alms-houses, prisons, and 
infirmaries ; they creep in the dust, and ride 
unnoticed, sometimes in carts and sometimes in 
carriages ; they soar in mid-air, float on ships, 
and sound the deep in search of treasure. 

In the ages past poverty and other depressing 
circumstances buried diamonds ; now, they are 
buried amid opportunities and splendors. Then, 
they were concealed by seclusion and despot- 



48 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

ism, and because the ages afforded no light to 
reflect their brilliancy ; now, they are covered 
beneath the leaves of the tree of liberty, amid 
schools and churches, with the full-orbed glories 
of the latter day streaming around them. 
Young men of parts, whose golden opportuni- 
ties gave promise of a brilliant future, bury 
themselves in unworthy indulgences, spend a 
few years in revelry, and then their lamp goes 
out. Alas ! how many brilliants are hopelessly 
buried every year in gambling dens, drinking 
gardens, opera houses, and those unmentionable 
places of midnight resort. "Void of under- 
standing," they turn away from the glories of 
intellectual, virtuous day, to bury themselves 
in vicious shades. Enchanted by the siren 
song of present but forbidden and ruinous 
gratifications, they follow "straightway as an 
ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the 

correction of the stocks, until a dart strike 

• 
through their liver ; as a bird hasteth to the snare 

and knoweth not that it is for his life." Alas ! 

humanity is buried in other than the recognized 

cemeteries that dot the fair suburbs of our 

cities and towns. Society has its prisons, its 

dungeons, its buried work-houses, its vaulted 



Buried Diamonds. 49 

chambers, with underground passage-ways, 
where myriads toil, and sport, and waste, and 
wait, and weep ! 

What was John Bunyan during the first 
twenty-five years of his life but a buried dia- 
mond ? He was illiterate, profligate, dissolute. 
So shockingly profane that an abandoned 
woman, whose heart had long been a stranger 
to every sentiment of purity, on hearing his 
blasphemies exclaimed, " You are the most un- 
godly man for swearing I ever saw ! " Who 
believed that selfish, gnarled, and morbid nature 
could be mellowed and changed into such 
depths of tenderness, made capable of such 
exact rectitude ; be made to blaze so surpris- 
ingly on earth, and stand up in history such a 
monument of moral purity ? Who imagined 
that so much sublimity of conception, poetry 
of thought, and graphic purity of diction, could 
be evolved from that clouded, profane intellect ? 
One would have been pronounced wild who 
had predicted that in coming generations a 
great literary light (Lord Macaulay) should 
style him " first of allegorists, as Demos- 
thenes is first of orators, and Shakspeare first 

of dramatists," and rank Bunyan and Milton as 
4 



50 Diamonds, Unpolished cmd Polished. 

the only two creative minds of England during 
the latter half of the seventeenth century. 
Verily, a brilliant diamond was exhumed when, 
under the melting, transforming influence of 
the great Spirit, his soul awoke to righteous- 
ness and the conscious responsibility of its sub- 
lime existence. 

What was John B. Gough during the first 
twenty-six years of his life but a buried jewel ? 
True, there were faint glimmerings of the true 
gem manifested during his boyhood as he toiled 
on in cold neglect and poverty, sighing and 
praying for a brighter day. But at the age of 
nineteen the dark waters overwhelmed him, 
swept him onward, downward, gulfward, far 
below the strata of his proper humanity, where 
he lay for six years so deeply incrusted in 
the blackened filth of that region that scarcely 
any perceived that he was a precious gem. But 
at last the day for his unearthing dawned, since 
which the sparklings of his great soul have 
flashed joy and gladness into the hearts of 
thousands on two hemispheres. 



Jewels in Disguise. 5 1 




CHAPTER III. 

JEWELS IN DISGUISE. 

MAN sadly intoxicated called at my 
door several years since and de- 
manded a hearing. He was tall, 
stalwart, commanding in person, and 
somewhat graceful in manner. His 
clothes were filthy, his hat worn and 
I slouched. He asked for food, which was 
y cheerfully given. Next he begged for 
A money, probably that he might continue 
I his revel. He urged and urged, but was 
! persistently refused. Turning to totter 
away, he cast back at me a wistful glance, arid 
in a half-subdued tone exclaimed, " Don't think 
meanly of me, sir ; I assure you I am a gentle- 
man in disguise." 

We will not affirm that all drunkards are 
well-bred gentlemen, or indeed gentlemen in 
any sense ; yet some oi them unquestionably 
once were, and all certainly possess qualities 
which might have,, been trained for honor and 



5 2 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

usefulness, and however sad their fall, ludicrous 
their appearance, or wretched their lives, we 
hazard nothing in asserting that they still, in 
an important sense, axe jewels in disguise. 

The plunge of the human soul into any of the 
voluptuous or sordid pleasures of sense is the 
most irrational and melancholy spectacle of 
time, and exceeded only by a still later plunge 
into a sea of eternal wretchedness, to which all 
streams of selfish pleasure inevitably tend, as 
rivers to the ocean ; and the loftier the altitude 
one has attained by sparkling gifts of nature, 
social position, intellectual or moral culture, the 
deeper and more frightful is the descent. A 
ball of gold descending from the altitude of a 
thousand feet will so bury itself in the hardest 
earth that all its glittering substance will be 
concealed ; but though covered, trodden under 
foot, and forgotten, it is still valuable ; and so 
with a fallen soul. Genius, learning, beauty, 
self-control, self-respect, indeed nearly every 
element of worth, may be so immured that it is 
passed by in cold neglect, despised, or forgot- 
ten — yet it is only a buried jewel. 

The most forlorn, dejected, or even demented 
specimen in the whole family of man is but a 



yew els in Disguise. 53 

masked jewel, a buried diamond, a concealed 
scintillation from the Eternal Orb of the uni- 
verse. A diamond is a diamond whether glit- 
tering in the diadem of a prince or incrusted in 
crude earth and buried by a thousand feet of 
soil. Cover it with all the polluting substances 
of nature, it is still a gem. Gold may be ground 
to powder, thrown into fire or water, mixed with 
sand, but its intrinsic value is not destroyed. 
You may beat it until the plate is less than the 
three hundred and fifty thousandth part of an 
inch in thickness, yet it is the same precious 
metal, untarnished and unchanged in nature 
and value. 

A fallen soul is tarnished by its voluntary al- 
liance with evil, but it possesses numerous in- 
herent and wondrous qualities of which it can 
never be divested. These original and essen- 
tial endowments live when the soul has de- 
scended to deepest infamy. They are evinced 
in freaks of fiendish invention, in flashes of wit, 
of sarcasm, or of remorse ; in gleams of affec- 
tion, of hope, or desire. 

Man is a gem whether you find him in Lon- 
don, in Yeddo, in Kamtchatka, or in Terra del 
Fuego. Whether robed in the royalty of a 



54 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

king, clad in the scanty habit of a serf, or quite 
uncovered like the wild African ; whether lux- 
uriating in a palace, shivering in a hovel, mas- 
ter in college of civilization, or servant in the 
wilds of barbarism ; whether handling the treas- 
ures of an empire, digging in a damp mine, or 
begging bread in the street ; whether shrewdly 
grasping for the clue that lifts to fame's high 
pinnacle, or feeling for the last black round in 
the ladder of shame, his intrinsic importance 
cannot be concealed. It marks the melody in 
the song of the saint, the revelry of the ine- 
briate, the curses of the criminal, and the rav- 
ings of the maniac. In his deepest moral de- 
fection his whole nature still glows with anima- 
tion and ambition. Hence he appears great in 
the midst of littleness, strong in weakness, wise 
in the midst of folly, and lofty in the most 
studied cruelty and _ meanness. Brutalize him 
as you may, you cannot make him a brute ; 
enslave and beat him, you cannot make 
him less than man ; rob, overpower, and crush 
him, he will not be subdued. His great 
nature may be neglected, or so concealed or 
debased by a sordid exterior as to challenge 
more of derision than of respect, still the im- 



Jewels in Disguise. 55 

portant fact remains unchanged — he is a jewel 
in disguise. 

Nearly every individual has his own standard 
of excellence, by which he judges the qualities 
of others ; and not a few look with coldness or 
contempt on large classes of persons because 
their delinquencies or vices are simply unlike 
their own. The calculating miser abominates 
the voluptuary and the inebriate, who in turn 
despise him, while the gay lady of fashion looks 
with high contempt on them all. All are alike 
fallen, viewing every thing from a false stand- 
point, and through a clouded atmosphere. 

Many people suppose the habitual drunkard 
to be so far fallen as to have utterly lost all am- 
bition, pride, conscience, hope, and even desire 
itself, except to gratify the cravings of a morbid 
appetite. What cares that man for the memory 
of his wife who is found in a state of beastly 
intoxication at the hour appointed for her funer- 
al ? Can any spark of manhood remain in him 
who sells for drink the loaf that should feed his 
starving child ? Can he be sensible of pride 
who daily disgraces the mother that bore him, 
the wife that loves him, and the children that 
bear his name ? Can any lofty aspirations lin- 



56 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

ger where every step is a plunge into a still 
deeper abyss of wretchedness and shame ? 
Can one be proud who is fallen so far ? Can 
real desire for better things dwell under those 
maudlin, ghastly, melancholy features ? To 
these inquiries thousands are ready to answer 
emphatically, No. And yet those who have 
long wallowed in the deepest mire of dissipa- 
tion have been recovered to tell us that the 
inebriate is not always so complete a wreck as 
is generally supposed. All the floods of alcohol 
cannot drown his ambition, nor all its flames 
consume his pride. It may stupefy at intervals, 
but cannot long deaden the conscience or ob- 
literate the memory. The remembrance of 
sunny hours in the better days that have flown 
away, the early lessons of wisdom and piety, the 
multiplied ministries of kindness and love, are 
at times brought to mind, filling the soul of the 
most reckless with a poignant sorrow under- 
stood only by him who has endured it. Every 
thing he meets suggests the melancholy con- 
trast between the present and the past. The 
landscape, the rill, the orchard, the garden, the 
church spire, the tolling bell, the rollicking play 
of the child, the countenance of the aged 



Jewels in Disguise. 57 

woman, the sprightly trip of the little maid, 
and the strains of pleasant music, all are alike 
vocal, talking to him in saddest tones of his 
childhood, his early playground, his home of 
affection, of his mother, his sister, his school, 
his sanctuary in those days of innocence and 
joy before disgrace had mantled his brow. If 
these things could only be forgotten, and he 
become wholly a brute, his deplorable condition 
would be more tolerable ; but, alas ! the attri- 
butes of that great nature cannot be ignored or 
winked into silence. He may plunge and 
plunge, and seek concealment in all the cav- 
ernous depths of sin, yet in spite of himself he 
must still remember and think and feel. "He 
may fly for solace to the maddening bowl, and 
stun his enemy in the evening, but it will re- 
turn to rend him like a giant in the morning." 
His fearful flight during intervals of awakening 
to the river, to the precipice, to stretch himself 
across the railroad track, invoking the pangs of 
a violent death to hide his disgrace, prove that 
he sees that he is a slave crouching under the 
sway of a remorseless tyrant, his better faculties 
quite concealed though not extinguished. 

To some there comes in an instant, under 



58 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

some apparently trivial circumstance, an awak- 
ening of pride of character, of self-respect, of 
hope, and a quickened resolution to reform. 
Gough gives numerous examples of this sudden 
resurrection of nobler sentiments among ine- 
briates, occasioned, perhaps, by the song or 
the unstudied utterances of a child. He men- 
tions the case of a miserable, despised man, 
pronounced by every body " a brute," who came 
to his home one day irritated with drink, and 
ready to vent his anger on all around him. 
His little boy, ten years old, came to the door, 
but seeing his intoxicated father attempted to 
escape. " Dick, come here ! come here ! " ut- 
tered in a stern, authoritative tone, brought him 
into his father's presence ; but his little face 
was bloody, his lip cut, and his eye greatly 
swollen. " What have you been doing, Dick ? " 
he inquired. The boy answered reluctantly, 
" I have been fighting, father." The man cared 
nothing about his boy's fighting, he was good 
at that himself; but he asked, "What have 
you been fighting about ? " The boy replied, 
" Don't ask me, father, for I don't want to tell 
you." With a still fiercer tone he exclaimed, 
"Tell me what you have been fighting for!" 



yew els in Disguise. 59 

" I don't want to." Full of rage, he seized him 
by the collar and roared out, " Nbw tell me 
what you have been fighting about or I'll cut 
the life out of you ! " The poor boy plead pite- 
ously, but as he still hesitated to tell the cause 
of the juvenile duel he struck him a severe 
blow with his clenched fist, and thundered 
again, " Now tell me what you have been fight- 
ing for ! " Finding himself in the paws of a 
lion who cared not for his life, the poor child 
wiped away the bloody tear from his mangled 
eye, and hesitatingly sobbed out, " Well, father, 
there was a rude boy out there who told me 
my father was a poor old drunkard, and I 
whipped him, and if he ever tells me that 
again I'll whip him again." The turning-point 
in that man's dreadful career was reached. The 
affection of his boy, evinced in that bloody 
countenance and that sobbing utterance, stung 
his soul as with a thousand poisoned arrows. 
The concealed jewel was unmasked. He was 
saved. Years afterward, in relating the cir- 
cumstance, he exclaimed, " O, Mr. Gough ! 
what could I say? My boy, ten years of age, 
fighting for his father's reputation ! I tell you 
it had like to have killed me. How I loved 



6o Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

that boy, my noble boy ! I could have almost 
worshiped him." 

Another drunken father, unable to obtain 
more drink, stole the Testament his little girl 
had received as a gift from her Sunday-school 
teacher and meanly bartered it for alcohol. 
Not long after she lay faint and gasping on a 
dying bed. Turning her wasted countenance 
toward her dissipated parent, she said, " Father, 
when I go to heaven, suppose Jesus should ask 
me what you did with my little Testament, 
what shall I tell him ? " That artless question, 
like a flash of lightning, pierced him through 
and through, and before she died he held her 
little hands in his, crying, " God be merciful to 



me a sinner 



Turning from the drunkard to the miser, we 
encounter an entirely different character. The 
one is a creature of appetite, the other of 
passion. One in his frenzy squanders every 
thing, the other deliberately retains and hoards 
all. A miser is one who lives for earthly accu- 
mulations, usually converting all his treasures 
into gold or silver, which he silently secretes, 
clings to it until death, and ardently loves it 
for its own sake. Possessed of vast wealth, he 



yewels in Disguise. 61 

wears the garb of the beggar, lives in a lonely 
garret, is nipped with frosts, scorched with heat, 
and pinched with hunger and disease. Late 
at night, when others are asleep, he bends with 
marvelous interest over his shining treasure. 
The pickpocket and burglar have never thought 
of searching for his possessions ; some have 
even pitied his poverty, while by the many he 
has been unnoticed and unknown. Finally he 
dies, and lo, in an iron-bound chest in some secret 
hiding-place are found thousands of dollars, much 
of the coin having, perhaps, been in his posses- 
sion for half a life-time. Acquisitiveness with 
him became a consuming passion, swallowing up 
all thoughts of benevolence, all love of display, 
and even the desire for the ordinary comforts 
of life. Many are covetous, though but few are 
capable of being misers. Most people seek 
money as the means to something else, but 
with the miser it is the end of all coveted good. 
Some years since a well-known Parisian banker 
(Mr. Ostervald) died in his native city Jiterally 
of want. So intent was this man on retaining 
his money, that within a few days of his death 
no importunities could induce him to purchase 
a piece of meat for the purpose of making him 



62 Diamonds , Unpolished and Polished. 

a soup. "'Tis true," said he, "I should not 
dislike the soup, but Ihave no appetite for the 
meat ; what, then, is to become of that ?" While 
thus dying of self-imposed starvation, lest he 
should be compelled to lose or give away a 
piece of meat, there was tied around his neck 
a silken bag which contained eight hundred 
bank-notes of a thousand francs each, or an 
amount about equal to one hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars. Mr. Wesley mentions the 
case of a man who, with an income of two hun- 
dred pounds a year, purchased each week a 
penny's worth of parsnips at the market, which 
he boiled in a large quantity of water. By 
drinking the water and eating the parsnips he 
entirely subsisted for a long period on a penny 
a week. 

While writing this volume we clipped from 
a daily paper the following : " Died, in San 
Francisco, April 13, 1872, Dr. William Hewer, 
an English miser, long a noted character in, 
San Francisco. He was found dead on a pile 
of rags in his room, which had not been swept 
in fourteen years. Over sixty thousand dollars 
in gold were found in this apartment." Robert 
Pollok, with his usual point and strength, has 



yewels in Disguise. 63 

given us a striking description of the miser. 
He says : 

"But there was one in folly farther gone; 

"With eye awry, incurable and wild, 

The laughing-stock of devils, and of men, 

And by his guardian angel quite giv'n up — 

The miser, who with dust inanimate 

Held wedded intercourse. Ill-guided wretch ! 

Thou mightest have seen him at the midnight hour 

"When good men slept, and in light-winged dreams 

Ascended up to God — in wasteful hall, 

"With vigilance and fasting worn to skin 

And bone, and wrapped in most debasing rags — 

Thou mightest have seen him bending o'er his heaps, 

And holding strange communion with his gold ; 

And, as his thievish fancy seemed to hear 

The night-man's foot approach, starting alarmed, 

And in his old, decrepit, withered hand, 

That palsy shook, grasping the yellow earth 

To make it sure. Of all God made upright, 

And in their nostrils breathed a living soul, 

Most fallen, most prone, most earthly, most debased; 

Of all that sold eternity for time, 

None bargained on so easy terms with death. 

Illustrious fool ! Nay, most inhuman wretch ! 

He sat among his bags, and with a look 

Which hell might be ashamed of, drove the poor 

Away unalmsed; and midst abundance died: 

Sorest of evils I died of utter want." 

The soul of even the miser is nevertheless a 
disguised jewel. Its faculties are sadly per- 
verted, but might have been turned to good 
account. A story is told of a young man who 



64 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

picked up a sovereign some .one had lost in 
the road. Greatly elated with his success, he 
ever afterward as he walked kept his eye 
steadfastly on the ground in hopes of finding 
more, and during his long life he did pick up 
considerable gold and silver. But through all 
this period he looked so perpetually downward 
that he saw not the verdure of the smiling 
fields, nor the brightness of the heavens above 
him, and when he died, a rich old man, he knew 
this fair earth only as a dirty road on which to 
pick up money. This man had powers capable 
of higher pursuits, but they were debased, and 
never made to answer the true end of their 
creation. 

The perfect miser is probably the most hope- 
less character in the world. The drunkard, 
the burglar, the voluptuary, and the gambler 
mingle in some society, retain the traces of 
some virtues, and evince some fluctuations of 
feeling, hence there are avenues through which 
they may be reached. But the miser seeks 
solitude, ignores every thing but his plans of 
gain, linking himself only to his molten god. 
By resisting conscience, and crushing every 
sympathetic impulse, his nature becomes ob- 



Jewels in Disguise. 6$ 

d urate and impenetrable, like the fire-hardened 
clay, impervious alike to light or heat. 

What miserable object is that stumbling 
over the curbstone to escape the ponderous 
cart-wheel ? Now that form grazes the lamp- 
post, reels against the door of a dingy shop, 
and falls prostrate on the slippery pavement. 
Let us draw near. Ah ! now I see ; it is the 
miserable wreck of a woman — and O, what a 
wreck ! Covered with dirt, her tattered gar- 
ments but half conceal her person. Her head 
is bare, save the long black ornament nature 
provided, which evinces great want of care. 
Her feet are nearly naked, her hands, arms, 
and neck deeply discolored. She has seen but 
thirty summers, but her staggering gait, her 
bronzed complexion, her battered face, her ex- 
pressionless eye, show ravages worse than 
those of years. 

But she has not been always thus. She 
was born in a pleasant cottage, surrounded 
with wealth and luxury. Her father went on 
'Change, handled rich wares, owned ships, and 
carried stocks. When he had an hour of 
leisure he hastened home, saluted his wife, 
looked into the blue eyes of his smiling child, 
5 



66 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

petted and kissed her, and called her his little 
queen. Servants rocked her, drove away the 
fly, carried her in their arms, and wealthy 
neighbors admired her. The heart of her 
fond mother glowed with silent pride over the 
brightening luster of her little gem. Those 
were days of innocent joy, little understood by 
her, and destined soon to fly away never to 
return. This period was the deep calm pre- 
ceding the storm which burst upon her life- 
voyage, darkening her sky, sweeping away her 
protectors, lashing and discoloring her nature, 
until she lies as you see, a stranded wreck, with 
scarcely the vestige of a woman or of humanity 
recognizable. A train of reverses overwhelmed 
her father. Her frail mother died of disap- 
pointment, leaving her child at a tender age 
without means or protection. The beauty of 
her gifted nature made her a brilliant mark for 
the destroyer and accelerated her ruin. Kind 
words, much longed-for, came in the voice of 
the deceiver, but they were followed by deser- 
tion, scorn, and the gall of the outcast. She 
had no father to defend her, no mother to pity 
or weep over her misfortune. No friendly 
retreat opened its door. No heart bled over 



Jewels in Disguise. 6? 

her woe, and no arms of generous help came 
to her relief. One false step led to another, 
and the descent became increasingly rapid and 
frightful, until she became the dreadful spec- 
tacle before you, her haggard form disclosing 
the ravages of wasting vices. But is she 
not a thousand times more to be pitied than 
despised ? Is she not too bright and valuable 
a jewel, though vailed in this dreadful garb, to 
be forever lost ? Her nature has become ex- 
ceedingly stolid. You cannot move her with 
contempt, or ridicule, or scorn, or blows, or 
threats. She has borne all these until her 
soul, as her body, has become callous. But 
do not count her a brute. Her nature still 
answers to Dickens' description of Mrs. Todg- 
ers, who, he says, "was a hard woman, yet in 
her heart, away up a great many stairs, there 
was a door, and on that door was written — 
Woman." In the depths of her discolored 
nature still linger the traces of the modest, 
affectionate, confiding girl. She has not lost 
all horror of sin, nor all desire for goodness. 
A hundred times she has wept over her crimes, 
and attempted reformation. More than once in 
the gray twilight of the morning she has laid 



68 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

her throbbing temples on her mother's grave, 
and with scalding tears has vowed again to be 
good, though this was followed by another 
plunge to a deeper degradation. There re- 
mains still one door of approach to the temple 
of her better nature. This door is bolted and 
guarded, yet it will yield to the pressure of un- 
selfish^ Christian tenderness. Under the melody 
of hallowed song, the burning appeals of a lov- 
ing heart, or the subduing power of prevailing 
prayer, the tide of pent-up emotion will burst 
forth accompanied by the blush of animated 
hope, the quailing eye, the softened tone of 
confession, penitence, and supplication. She is 
simply a jewel in disguise, and God's earnest 
miners are every day gathering diamonds from 
the gutters and sewers of earth's slimy fields 
that shall glitter forever in the sparkling diadem 
of the world's Redeemer. 

What is a gay young woman of wealth, 
pleasure, and fashion, but a jewel in disguise ? 
She has been divinely invested with sterling 
capacity, and might teach, relieve, and save ; 
but she is buried soul and body under the 
plumes of fashion, and lives and dies as use- 
lessly as the butterfly. How can those delicate 



Jewels in Disguise. 69 

feet run on errands of mercy for the relief of 
the helpless and sorrowful ? They are weary 
already with shopping and waltzing. How can 
those snow-white hands steady the tottering, or 
carry the burden of her who is ready to perish ? 
They have not seen the sun for a year, and the 
blue veins disclose the fact that they are dying 
for want of healthy activity. This poor creat- 
ure is perpetually wearied with the hollow 
aimlessness of her existence, trailing about in 
long and tightly-fitted garments, covered with 
flounces, fringes, and laces. The lassitude re- 
sulting from evening rides, theaters, and late par- 
ties has taken away all desire for usefulness, if 
any' ever existed. Perhaps she attends a fash- 
ionable church occasionally on pleasant Sab- 
bath mornings, but how can she attain to 
thoughts of a Change of Heart, of Providence, 
of the Resurrection, or Eternity ? How be in- 
terested in matters of Sunday-schools or Mis- 
sions when such an array of choice bonnets, 
basques, shawls, and gorgeous trimmings are 
floating around her ? How can she instruct 
orphan children, or spend time to relieve or 
counsel a friendless woman as long as those 
questions with the French dressmaker remain 



JO Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

unsettled — whether the new silk overskirt shall 
be in the Jessamine, Juliet, Adrienne, the Mor- 
daunt, Zerlina, or Casilda style ; whether the 
rich velvet basque shall be of the Imogen, 
Evalie, or Mignon ; and whether loose, gored, 
or double-breasted ? Ought she not to have a 
new Lulu jacket, and a Talma of the latest style ? 
A new tight-fitting polonaise could be worn 
occasionally if very richly trimmed. What of 
the Dean, Felina, or Dolly Varden styles ? At 
how many of the watering-places shall she go 
to spend portions of the heated term ? and what 
shall be the nature and variety of her outfit ? 
What shall be the programme for entertain- 
ments, receptions, and parties during the au- 
tumn and winter ? These and similar thoughts 
occupy all her mind. She has not a moment 
for prayer or usefulness, or a thought for hu- 
manity or eternity. The annual cost of her 
wardrobe would purchase a plantation. In her 
visit to Saratoga she carries more changes of 
raiment, and as many jewels and valuables, as 
did the Queen of Sheba in her visit to Solomon. 
Her notions of^Jife are all inflated. Life is a 
bubble and a dream, and after a brief and gay 
career, her remains, in costly vestments, fol- 



Jeivels in Disguise. yi 

lowed by a long and brilliant procession, find 
their place beneath the adornments of the 
cemetery ! But she was buried while she lived, 
walled in by selfishness and pride, by notions 
of caste, and by excessive love of ease, of gayety, 
and pleasure. 

Wealthy parents bury their children, particu- 
larly their daughters, amid luxuries and the 
conventionalities of fashionable society. Many 
young women among the rich have sterling 
ambitions, real energy, and force of character, 
but these are dwarfed because perpetually re- 
strained and bound down by the false demands 
of fashion. A young man in the same circle 
grows restive, breaks the shackles, and plunges 
into business amid the hearty applause of the 
community. But let the daughter inquire for 
something to tax her faculties, and she is 
pointed to her piano, to her croquet-ground, to 
her French dressmaker, and advised to aban- 
don all schemes of importance save hunting for 
a rich husband. We shall never know how 
many young ladies, capable of being genuine 
heroines, real diamonds, are buried or disguised 
under the immense fortunes of successful mer- 
chants, bankers, and proprietors of real estate. 



72 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

As the ancient heathen sacrificed their children 
to their molten gods, so do these at the shrine 
of fashion and mammon. Every thing most 
worthy, important, and eternal is sacrificed to 
the trivial and the ephemeral. As in the dream 
of Pharaoh, the lean kine devour the fat kine. 
Love of display, of ease, and of self consumes 
all thoughts of being serviceable to man, and 
reverent or obedient to God. Heaven is swal- 
lowed by earth, and eternity by time. 

Reader, what is your real stains in the realm 
of intellect, and in the world of morals and re- 
ligion ? What powers of your mind and of 
your heart have the predominance ? Have you 
sought by suitable reading, meditation, and 
prayer ; by humility, self-denial, and useful toil, 
to assiduously cultivate your better faculties ? 
Is it your daily and absorbing study to know 
how to be true, useful, intelligent, and wise ; to 
know how to so direct and develop your pow- 
ers as to most improve humanity and honor 
God ? If to these inquiries an affirmative re- 
sponse is given, though your progress has hith- 
erto appeared slow, and your success moderate, 
you have reason to be encouraged. The intel- 
lectual and moral graces of your soul will yet 



yewels in Disguise. 73 

burst forth with a glow, with a fervor and a 
luster of which you have at present no ade- 
quate conception. But if the love of ease, or 
of display, or of wealth ; the gratification of ap- 
petite, or the pursuit of empty honors, has ruled 
your heart and your life, then, with all your en- 
dowments and progress, you still are, and may 
forever remain, only — a jewel in disguise. 



74 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 



CHAPTER IV. 




POLISHING ROUGH DIAMONDS. 

HE processes by which a diamond is 
prepared for use are exceedingly 
slow and painful, and as all dia- 
monds are found in the rough, a 
handsomely cut stone is all the more vain- 
ly able in consequence of the expense attend- 
ing its polishing. The surface form of the 
diamond is changed by taking advantage 
of its cleavage by abrasion with its own 
powder, and by friction with another dia- 
mond. All flaws are removed if possible by 
the skillful lapidary by cleaving it, otherwise it 
must be sawed with an iron wire covered with 
diamond powder, which is a tedious process, as 
the wire is usually worn in two when drawn five 
or six times across the jewel. After the por- 
tions containing flaws have been removed the 
stone is fixed to the end of a stick in strong 
cement, leaving the part projecting which is to 
be cut, and another diamond is fixed in a simi- 



Polishing Rough Diamoiids. 75 

lar manner, and the two rubbed together until 
facets are produced. By changing the position 
other and still other facets are produced, until 
the desired form is obtained. A revolving 
wheel of soft iron, covered with diamond pow- 
der, is used in completing the polish. Some- 
times an experienced workman will consume 
many days in producing a single facet, at other 
times one is produced in a few hours. The cut- 
ting of large and valuable diamonds is a very 
critical undertaking, as a workman may in a 
moment destroy more than he can earn in a 
life-time. 

The immortal diamond, of which these spark- 
ling gems of nature are but the figure, comes 
into being also in an unpolished condition, and 
requires no small amount of abrasion to fit it 
for the exalted uses contemplated by the Crea- 
tor in its formation. The larger part by far of 
those who have attained to special distinction 
in the world were in their early beginnings 
quite unpromising, and considered by the most 
hopeful, at the very best, as only diamonds in 
the rough. The uprisings of these intellectual 
gems from profoundest obscurity to astonish 
the world with inventions, charm with marvel- 



j6 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

ous genius, dazzle with learning or eloquence, 
or to lead its gifted minds by the depths of 
their wisdom, have been in all times matters 
of more than transient interest. As when a 
large, rich diamond has been unexpectedly dis- 
covered the valleys of a neglected district are 
speedily brought into importance, so extraor- 
dinary exhibitions of talent or genius suddenly 
clothe one's earlier career, though hitherto quite 
unnoticed, with magical interest. Curious crit- 
ics are at once ready to embark on a voyage of 
discovery in quest of one's genealogy, the cot 
of his birth, the school, associations, habits, 
books, and whatever else are supposed to have 
entered into his formation. Theories are in- 
vented, matters of trivial importance strangely 
magnified, and manufactured vagaries trum- 
peted around the world. Fierce word-battles 
have been fought about the birthplace of Ho- 
mer and the facts of his existence. The shades 
of Attica have been pierced to find the lamp 
and pebbles of Demosthenes. Ingenious minds 
have tracked the father of John Milton through 
the royal forests of Oxfordshire, described the 
cradle in which Goldsmith was rocked at Kil- 
kenny, and traced the history of Irving's an- 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. J J 

cestors for several centuries in the Orkney 
Isles back to the armor-bearer of the illustrious 
Bruce. 

The hereditary gentry of the world have 
presumed to ask what right a Brotherton, a 
mere factory boy, has to a seat in Parliament ? 
a Newton, the son of an indigent yeoman, to 
grasp the noblest laurels in philosophy ? a 
Nelson, the son of an obscure clergyman, to 
become ruler of the seas ? a Luther, the off- 
spring of an industrious ore-digger, to become 
one of the world's chief ministers ? or a Lincoln, 
a frontier farm-laborer, to the presidential chair 
in an enlightened nation ? The common sense 
of the ages has, however, accorded the palm 
to him whose capacity and toil have nobly won 
it, irrespective of previous relationship, whether 
to master or minion. 

A surprising proportion of illustrious men, 
whose names now grace as with gilded charac- 
ters the pages of history, not only sprang from 
obscure families and were bred in penury, but 
exhibited in their early years a dullness almost 
crushing the hopes of their parents and dis- 
couraging their teachers and themselves. Some 
appeared alike destitute of penetration and 



7 8 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

memory, and of a desire to either know or do. 
Unlike West, who declared that his mother's 
encouraging kiss made him a painter, some 
of these remained for years perfectly imperturb- 
able amid the flatteries and threats of friend 
and foe. Whenever their talent was brought 
into healthy competition they suddenly paled 
in the luster of others, and shrank into obscu- 
rity ; and when experiment or favoritism placed 
them at the head of the class, they preserved 
their identity by as speedily gravitating to the 
inevitable bottom. 

When Isaac Newton, afterward Sir Isaac, 
was at school in Skillington, he stood for a 
long period at the foot of one of the lowest 
classes, and was such an unmitigated dunce 
that many despaired of his ever knowing any 
thing. Isaac Barrows, the distinguished mathe- 
matician and divine, when at school at the 
Charter House was remarkable for his idleness, 
insolence, and pugnacious habits. He appeared 
to have been formed for an ignorant, imbruted 
pugilist. His stupidity and obstinacy were a 
perpetual grief to his parents, and his father 
was once heard to say that if it pleased God 
to remove any of his children he hoped it 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 79 

would be Isaac, the least promising of them 
all. Jonathan Swift, afterward the brilliant 
Dean of St. Patrick's, was a most indifferent 
and reckless student, squandering time, and so 
unmindful of authority as to incur seventy 
penalties and censures in two years, and after 
suffering many insults was further disgraced 
by receiving his bachelor's degree after the 
proper time, and Speciali gratia. Adam Clarke, 
the learned Wesleyan commentator, ranked 
among the dullest of boys until he passed his 
eighth year. Thomas Chalmers, and a youth 
of similar age, who afterward became Professor 
of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, were so 
stupid and unmanageable that the disheartened 
teacher of the parish school expelled them both 
as quite unworthy of further effort. Walter 
Scott, at a later period Sir Walter, while at 
school was an expert at a "bicker," but lame 
and tame at a lesson. Professor Dalzell, at the 
Edinburgh University, pronounced upon him 
the unfounded sentence and prediction, " Dunce 
you are, and dunce you will remain." Sheri- 
dan's mother, grieved by his unyielding stolid- 
ity, presented him to a new tutor with this 
uncomplimentary statement, " He is 



8o Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

rigible dunce." Oliver Goldsmith was sadly 
lacking in good sense through, at least, the 
first half of his career, and after his death was 
described by his early teacher as a boy " im- 
penetrably dull!' Alfieri, the Italian Count and 
terse dramatic poet, spent eight years in aca- 
demic shades without attaining the rudiments 
of an education ; and John Howard spent seven 
years in school to very little purpose. Robert 
Clyde, who died Lord Baron of Plassey, and 
the far-famed conqueror of India, was in youth 
so adverse to study, and so violent and treach- 
erous in temper, that his father, fearful of his 
future, shipped him to Madras as a subordinate 
attache of the East India Company. Hugh 
Miller, at the Grammar School at Cromarty, 
stood " usually at the nether end of a very poor 
class." No one discovered any thing remark- 
able in the early career of Wellington, Napoleon, 
Franklin, Sir Humphrey Davy, Watts, Burns, 
Washington, Elihu Burritt, Edward Hitchcock, 
and many more who have since become dis- 
tinguished. 

Perhaps the youthful reader is quite impa- 
tient to know how the buried jewel in their 
nature was reached ; how their groveling 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 81 

thoughts were, like the rocket, suddenly made 
to flash upward, and by what mysterious abra- 
sions they attained the luster that filled their 
elevated sphere of greatness. Man is not, like 
the diamond, absolutely passive. He is divinely 
favored with the power of unearthing himself — 
of feeling his way into the higher realms of 
existence, and to the exercise of this inherent 
power must we look for the brilliant changes 
in men's intellectual career more than to all 
other sources combined. By some circumstance 
a dull boy becomes suddenly conscious that 
he possesses latent and hitherto unemployed 
powers. This appears to have flashed through 
the minds of some while burning under a sense 
of shame ; of others, by the dawnings of lofty 
ambitions ; and of still others, under the smart 
of provocations. 

After Newton had stood at the foot of his 
class until all supposed him a fixture, the boy 
next above him, in a freak of petulance, and 
supposing him perfectly stolid, administered«to 
him a smart kick. That fortunate kick broke 
the shell of his slumbering genius, and gathering 
energy he forthwith challenged his assailant to 

a youthful duel, and dealt him a much-deserved 
6 



82 Diamonds ; Unpolished and Polished. 

drubbing. Having vanquished his antagonist 
in the yard, he resolved to repeat it in the 
school, and soon rose not only to the head of 
the class, but of the school as well. And it 
was by the force of the same will, and of similar 
persistent and unflagging application, that he 
continued to rise ever afterward until the world 
was glad to enshrine his name in the temple of 
fame. Adam Clarke was similarly aroused by 
the sarcasm of a school-fellow, after which he 
made rapid progress in every thing except 
mathematics. Curran, the Irish orator, when 
at school was familiarly known as " Stuttering 
Jack," which led to numerous and deep embar- 
rassments. At a debating club he arose to 
speak, but finding himself speechless he sat 
down in confusion. A witty antagonist re- 
ferred to him as " Orator Mu7n" bringing down 
the house with roars of laughter. Curran's 
Irish combatables now came to the rescue, and 
he replied in a triumphant speech, his first 
exhibition of real oratory. This consciousness 
of ability, this self-respect, form an indispensa- 
ble foundation for large development, leading 
to important undertakings and surprising re- 
sults. Newton believed he could improve the 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 83 

telescopes of his day ; hence he pursued his 
investigations until led to exchange the refract- 
ing lens for the reflecting. Herschel believed 
he could perfect his seven-foot reflector, though 
untaught ; and though he failed in adjusting the 
specula one hundred and ninety-nine times, he 
persevered, and the two hundredth experiment 
proved successful. 

All truly great and successful men perceive, 
and have also shown, that the period of devel- 
opment extends through one's entire career ; 
hence, like the persevering lapidary, they have 
steadily held the diamond to the wheel from 
year to year, conscious that ultimate triumph 
must crown their exertions. Though pro- 
nounced dunces, perhaps, at the beginning, 
they were not of the life-long kind, counting 
every thing valuable too high for their reach 
or too deep for their soundings. When clearly 
mistaken or in the wrong they have hastily 
changed front. When they awoke to the fact 
that their education had been neglected, they 
immediately undertook the remedy with intens- 
est application, not faltering because school- 
days were ended. School training is valuable 
chiefly from the contact with advanced minds 



84 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

and the habit formed of systematic and pro- 
tracted application. But no amount of mere 
academic training ever made one illustrious, 
and none but a veritable self-made dunce 
ever sat down in indolent despair because he 
had not enjoyed it. Men in every sphere be- 
come educated and great by toil and thought. 
Putting ideas into one's head is not educating, 
any more than putting wheat into the mill is 
grinding. Thoughts forced into the mind by 
teachers, unless inwardly studied, are as worth- 
less as bread injected into the stomach of the 
dead. All great men have taught their powers 
the art of perpetual work, and when this is 
once accomplished one will secure education 
anywhere and under almost any circumstances. 
Multitudes of illustrious men would have died 
in obscurity had they not practiced on the 
principle presented in the reply of Edward 
Stone to the -Duke of Argyle, who inquired 
how he, a gardener's boy, had learned to read 
Latin. He replied, " One needs only to know 
the English alphabet to learn every thing else 
he wishes." Dr. Dempster, late President of 
the Garrett Biblical Institute, was self-taught 
in the Methodist itinerancy. He mastered, like 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 85 

Adam Clarke, one dead language after another, 
in privacy, and rose to be a master among 
scholars. Eliphalet Nott, D.D., for fifty-six 
years President of Union College, was also 
self-educated. He pursued his studies alone, 
toiling on the farm, entering Brown Univer- 
sity just six weeks previous to the close of the 
term, and was graduated with the class. Al- 
fieri at the age of twenty-seven went back to 
grammar, and studied the rudiments of learning 
which he had neglected at school. He spent 
years in middle life in the mountains of Pied- 
mont with books and an occasional literary com- 
panion, and at forty-six took up the study of 
Greek. Dr. Edward Hitchcock enjoyed only the 
most limited facilities of early schooling, but by 
incessant private application rose to the first 
rank of American scholarship, publishing over 
twenty volumes, some of which have been de- 
servedly popular in two hemispheres. Washing- 
ton Irving, also, never attended either college 
or academy ; Goldsmith formed no attachment 
for literature until he was thirty ; Arkwright 
began the study of grammar at fifty ; Sir Henry 
Spelman, the English antiquarian, began sci- 
ence at fifty-five; Benjamin Franklin at twenty- 



86 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

seven took up the study of the Latin, Italian, 
French, and Spanish languages, and did not be- 
gin in earnest with natural philosophy until he 
was nearly fifty. While crossing the Atlantic 
on his Government mission to France, in 1776, 
and at the age of seventy years, he studied out 
the theory of the Gulf Stream, and was the first 
to explain that interesting problem. 

Most of these brilliant lights, known to us 
chiefly by their literary productions, were also 
through life involved in the incessant prosecu- 
tion of other pursuits. They never waited for 
leisure, or brooked the idea of abandoning study 
under the pressure of business. They were 
miserly of time, turning its smallest fractions 
to the best account. Ben Jonson is said to 
have toiled at the building of Lincoln's Inn 
with "a trowel in his hand and a book in his 
pocket." Hugh Miller studied geology while 
toiling in the quarries of Cromarty ; and Elihu 
Burritt mastered over twenty languages before 
be abandoned his trade at the anvil, since which 
he has added as many more to the list, while 
involved in other active pursuits. Clive devel- 
oped himself amid the savages of the East In- 
dies ; Bloomfield composed his best poem on a 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 87 

shoemaker's bench, in a garret ; and Herschel, 
in deepest poverty, studied astronomy at Bath, 
playing an organ for his board. Dr. Darwin, 
the English physiologist and poet, composed 
several books while riding among his patients ; 
Charles Wesley thought out his best hymns on 
horseback ; Kirke White learned Greek while 
walking to and from a lawyer's office ; and Al- 
bert Barnes wrote all his books before nine in 
the morning, amid the labors of a busy pas- 
torate. Dickens wrote most of his books while 
filling the chair of an editor. Milton was a 
teacher and a busy State officer, and wrote 
more political treatises than we are now willing 
to read. Lord Bacon was, through much of his 
life, an industrious lawyer, and advanced from 
this to important State appointments. Shak- 
speare was an actor, and the manager of his 
own theater, writing all his plays for his own 
use, and with no apparent ambition for literary 
fame. Greeley, Bryant, Stevens, and Holland 
have broughfout their best works in the snatches 
of time redeemed from their laborious under- 
takings as editors of influential journals. Bax- 
ter, Calvin, Farel, Cranmer, Hooper, Hooker, 
Boston, Wesley, Fletcher, Watson, Brownlee, 



88 Diamonds y Unpolished and Polished, 

and Edwards were ministers, so abundant in 
pulpit and pastoral labors, so involved in con- 
troversies, missionary enterprises, and other 
labors, that we wonder where they found time 
for deep literary pursuits. Their examples 
prove, however, that an active business career 
does not prevent the highest scientific attain- 
ments, or the most extensive and gifted au- 
thorship, by those who know the value of time 
and are intent on its improvement. The real 
secret of success is this : some become wealthy, 
learned, and great by simply turning to account 
what others throw away. 

The career of earth's brightest intellects has 
been also marked by an unbending purpose to 
excel. Discouragements crowd the path of all, 
though not in an equal degree, requiring fre- 
quently the tact of an Alexander to cut the 
Gordian knot. Opulent advantages are of small 
value unless promptly improved, and ordinary 
embarrassments, to a sterling mind, are only 
calculated to make success the more triumph- 
ant. No one ever rose above his ambitions, 
or attained to any eminence without first re- 
solving to pay the price and remain deaf to 
every other solicitation. And however crowded 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 89 

may be the ordinary walks of life, there is al- 
ways scope for more laborers in the elevated 
spheres of human action. When Daniel Web- 
ster was told that the field of law was overrun 
with barristers, and that he should not think 
of turning his attention to such a crowded 
arena, he significantly replied, " There is room 
enough at the top," and evidently resolved to 
find the open space. Few men have ever at- 
tained to great eminence without such gigantic 
struggles as the many are unwilling to put 
forth. As they rise to higher planes of thought 
they encounter prejudice and sometimes envy. 
The most illustrious minds have at certain pe- 
riods in their career appeared to the masses 
of their contemporaries like sublime simple- 
tons, fitly illustrating Solomon's declaration, 
" Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar 
with a pestle, yet will not his folly depart from 
him." The early career of Disraeli, the En- 
glish Premier, both as author and orator, affords 
a striking example. He was certainly "brayed" 
in every thing but a " mortar," and with every 
thing but a "pestle," yet he held bravely on, 
saying, when utterly laughed down in Parlia- 
ment, " I will sit down now, but the time will 



90 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

come when you will hear me ;" which prophecy 
was long since fulfilled. 

Advanced minds are often misunderstood, 
and their labors disparaged, if not attributed 
to the worst motives. Socrates was charged 
with corrupting the youth of his time because 
his thoughts towered above the idolatries of the 
age, and he was accordingly put to death. All 
Ephesus went off in a transport of rage be- 
cause Paul could not glorify Diana. Galileo 
suffered deep persecution through life, and was 
denied ordinary burial after death, because his 
philosophical discoveries were in advance of his 
contemporaries. Harvey lost nearly all his prac- 
tice as a physician by publishing his discovery 
of the circulation of the blood, and was stigma- 
tized as a "fool" by the medical fraternity. 
Kepler, Newton, Roger Bacon, and Locke were 
pronounced heretics, infidels, or gross material- 
ists. All the reformers, as well as the Wesleys, 
Whitefield, and Edwards, suffered violent oppo- 
sition and obloquy. They were branded as 
hypocrites, false teachers, and usurpers, chiefly 
because they lived in higher realms of thought, 
attained to a deeper experience, and were 
moved by purer impulses than those around 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 91 

them. Their triumph resulted from their hearty 
adoption of the apostles' motto : " None of 
these things move me, neither count I my life 
dear unto myself, so that I might finish my 
course with joy, and the ministry I have re- 
ceived of the Lord Jesus." 

Most of those distinguished men who flourished 
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
pursued their researches and toils solely from 
a love of truth and of souls. Calvin is said to 
have reaped no pecuniary reward from his vig- 
orous pen. Milton sold his immortal " Para- 
dise Lost " for five pounds, and Bunyan re- 
ceived but a trifle from his "Pilgrim's Progress." 
The copyright on Newton's Principia brought 
its gifted author but inconsiderable returns, 
which was true of nearly all the solid works of 
that period. Hume's early publications fell 
dead from the press, though he afterward at- 
tained popularity and fortune. Irving's re- 
nowned " Sketch Book," backed by the influ- 
ence of Walter Scott, was rejected by the En- 
glish publishers, after which the defeated but 
persistent author issued it on his own account. 
The proportion of those early authors who se- 
cured wealth from their toils to those who were 



92 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

poorly paid, or not at all, is as the proportion of 
those giant trees of California to the millions in 
the American forests. Yet they shrank from 
no sacrifice or toil ; no amount of pains was 
spared for the best accomplishment of a great 
work. Literary men, above all others, are lavish 
in the bestowment of time, toil, and money on 
their undertakings, though they have the most 
uncertain prospects of reward. 

Adam Clarke toiled forty-eight years over his 
Commentary ; Webster devoted thirty of the 
best years of his life to his Dictionary, which 
in its present form has cost fully one hundred 
years of incessant literary application ; Whedon 
studied twenty-five years on his great work on 
the Will ; Watt studied thirty years on his con- 
densing engine ; and Ericsson twenty years on 
his floating battery, the Monitor. The record 
of the great is not the freak of fortune, but is 
inscribed in lines of effort and devotion, sus- 
tained by a purpose and fed by an enthusiasm 
so ardent as to consume fortune, favor, and 
often life itself. 

Samuel Smiles, in his work on " Character," 
has truly said, " The work of some of the great- 
est discoverers has been done in the midst of 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 93 

persecutions, difficulty, and suffering. Colum- 
bus, who discovered the New World, and gave 
it as a heritage to the Old, was in his life-time 
persecuted, maligned, and plundered by those 
whom he had enriched. Mungo Park's drown- 
ing agony in the African river, which he had 
discovered, but which he was not to live to 
describe ; Clapperton's perishing of fever on 
the banks of the great lake, in the heart of the 
same continent, which was afterward to be re- 
discovered and described by other explorers ; 
Franklin's perishing in the snow — it might be 
after he had solved the long-sought problem of 
the North-west passage — are among the most 
melancholy events in the history of enterprise 
and genius." 

Persons of transcendent genius or of extraor- 
dinary discoveries well know that they must 
and can afford to wait for the appreciation of 
the world. Sir Isaac Newton triumphantly 
overturned the philosophical system of Des 
Cartes ; yet so violent was the opposition to 
his views on the Continent that at his death it 
was estimated he had not over twenty followers 
outside of England, though his Principia had 
been forty years before the world. Time 



94 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

usually clears away obscurities, placing ulti- 
mately one's record in its true light ; but if this 
fails, eternity will disclose all, so that the good 
and the evil will find their appropriate rewards. 
We ought to encourage young people of both 
sexes, whose education has from any cause been 
neglected, who have sighed for better opportuni- 
ties, or whose minds have been of slow and im- 
perfect development. Nearly every community 
has a class of clumsy, awkward, ungainly boys, 
and of girls not particularly prized for their 
brilliant intuitions. These are often ridiculed 
by their associates, and neglected by their 
teachers and friends. If the eye of such a 
youth runs over these pages, let him take cour- 
age. Some minds do not open for the rapid 
mastery of study until comparatively late in life. 
Some memories grasp every thing as soon as 
presented to-day, and have lost it all by to- 
morrow ; while others are slow and unskillful 
in the reception of facts, but retain forever all 
they grasp. Remember that your whole career, 
both, in time and eternity, is for improvement ; 
and we have shown how, in a multitude of in- 
stances, the dunces have by application become 
illustrious. Education is not of transient value. 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 95 

An inquiring, well-poised mind turns all its 
reading, observation, and experience to some 
valuable account, and these habits of close ob- 
servation, of intense and useful application of 
talents and time, give, after all, the only zest to 
life. How gloomy is a prison to a stupid profli- 
gate who has no ambition to be a student ! 
The hours lie upon his mind as bags of sand. 
All is gloom, because no intellectual lamp sheds 
its radiance through his soul ; but the student 
turns his cell into a study and a laboratory. 
Many great and good men, and women too, have 
dwelt in prison since John the Baptist was be- 
headed in his cell. They have wept, and prayed, 
and counseled, and planned, and fought, and 
triumphed there. The world would be poor to- 
day without the books written in prison. The 
nations have often experienced good because 
the sighings of the thoughtful prisoner have 
entered the ear of the Lord of Sabaoth. 

Without these habits of application travel is 
a weariness and a discomfort. Grossing the 
Alps, the Great Desert, or the Rocky Mount- 
ains to the indolent, thoughtless man is a te- 
dious exposure. His mind is occupied with 
the creaking of the diligence, the drifting of 



g6 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

the sand, or the rumbling of the cars, and he 
comes to the end of his journey dusty, drowsy, 
petulant, and disgusted Another has found it 
an exquisite pleasure — one unbroken revel amid 
the original and undisturbed beauties of nature. 
He has classified the plants, collected the testi- 
mony of the rocks, studied the nature and hab- 
its of the animals, and been charmed with the 
variety and plumage of the feathered tribes^ 
He has named and numbered the mountains, 
ascertained their height, direction, and forma- 
tion. The beetling cliff poised in mid-air is not 
to his eye in vain, nor the placid lake smiling 
in unbroken solitudes, nor the channels of the 
rivers cut in graceful curves, nor the wild cas- 
cade, with its shelving sides and dashing waters. 
Proportion and form and magnitude find place 
in his mind, as well as utility and beauty. To 
his mind it is not in vain that there are color- 
ings in the crystal and in the foliage, blended 
hues in the rainbow, golden glories in the sun- 
set, and gems in the mine. A thousand beau- 
ties start into existence every-where to attract 
his eye, and his ears are greeted with the sym- 
phonies of pleasant sound ; yet this gifted trav- 
eler was once an ignorant boy. Now he med- 



Polishing Rough Diamonds. 97 

dies with all knowledge, lives in all time, shares 
in all triumphs, and hopes for all good. How 
important and delightful the work, and how 
wonderful and glorious the results, of polishing 
a rough diamond ! 



98 Diamonds, Unpolished mid Polished 



CHAPTER V. 

BRILLIANTS. 

JAMONDS are known by a variety 
of names, according to the form in 
which they are cut, and the form is 
usually determined by the size and value 
of the stone. If the stone is quite thin in 
proportion to its breadth, it can only be 
cut into a rose or a table diamond. The 
table is considered the least beautiful 
W mode of cutting, and is used to turn frag- 
^w ments and thin stones to some account. 
v This diamond has a square central facet, 
surrounded by two or more series of four-sided 
facets, corresponding to the sides of the square. 
The rose diamond consists of a central eight- 
sided facet of small siz*e, eight triangles, one 
corresponding to each side of the table, eight 
trapeziums next, and then a series of sixteen 
triangles. 

But the most perfect and beautiful of all is 
the Brilliant. This diamond has at the centei 



Brilliants. 99 

or top a principal face, called the table, which 
is surrounded by a number of sloping facets ; 
below it has a small face parallel to the table, 
connected by elongated facets with the edge of 
the upper part. The depth of a brilliant is 
nearly equal to its breadth, hence this diamond 
can only be cut from a thick stone. The facets 
of a brilliant are so formed as to powerfully re- 
flect and refract the light, and if the stone is 
sufficiently rich when brought into a strong 
light it will dazzle the eye of the beholder with 
its glitter. 

There are many more varieties of minds than 
there are of diamonds, these varieties consisting 
in part of inherent qualities, and in part of pe- 
culiar moldings received in systems of educa- 
tion and the habits of life. One cannot study 
the history of the great without being forcibly 
impressed that there is a wide difference in the 
processes and periods of development, even 
among those who attain to similar spheres of 
thought and action. Some are intellectual 
prodigies — brilliants — from birth, devouring 
books, and attempting composition in the nur- 
sery — springing almost from the cradle to 
realms of learning and fame ; while others, with 



ioo Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

benumbed intellects, grope on to manhood or 
middle life before their genius fully awakes, 
but even then attain to the celebrity of the 
others. We are aware that this term genius 
has been defined a thousand times, and in 
nearly as many ways. Some writers have con- 
sidered it an intuitive and spontaneous power, 
denominating all trained ability mere "talent." 
But we think distinguished mental superiority, 
however acquired, deserves the title of genius. 
With some this is doubtless originally inherent, 
and, like the pinion of the eagle, rises imme- 
diately to strength, while with others it is devel- 
oped by protracted and painful processes. The 
oratorical genius of Patrick Henry was original 
and spontaneous, bursting forth unexpectedly 
and volcano-like at the trial of the " Parson 
Cause " in Virginia ; but with Demosthenes, 
Whitefield, Prentice, and Clay, it was the result 
of most assiduous cultivation. Who will say 
that the latter were not as deserving of the title 
as the former ? 

The poetic genius of Shakspeare was also 
spontaneous, his mind being poorly cultivated, 
and his plays the only literary attempts of his 
life ; while the genius of Milton, displayed in 



Brilliants. 101 

" Paradise Lost," was the opulent product of 
forty-five years of literary application. 

Watt, Fulton, Morse, and Ericsson were cer- 
tainly all geniuses, but their successful inven- 
tions resulted from the depth of their culture, 
and not from the spontaneous outburst of un- 
cultivated imagination. And what less can be 
said of Franklin, Leverrier, Agassiz, and Au- 
dubon ? Genius, then, comprises several varie- 
ties — may be brilliant and startling at the be- 
ginning, may quietly slumber for a considerable 
period, or require culture and training for its 
successful exercise. 

The opinion has sometimes obtained that a 
precocious child either develops into a stupid 
adult, or, like a spring flower, fades early. 
Hence premature development has frequently 
been considered an irremediable calamity. A 
somewhat careful consideration of the subject 
has, however, convinced us that early death is 
by no means a necessary sequence of precocity, 
and that a genuinely brilliant child has seldom 
become stupid unless broken by disease, a mis- 
fortune (sometimes inherited, but oftener re- 
sulting from mismanagement or misconduct) 
which has eclipsed the career of far too many. 



102 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

It is interesting to know how many distin- 
guished authors and public men were preco- 
cious children, gleaming, almost from birth, 
with intellectual fire. Matthew Henry read 
the Bible aloud to his mother before he had 
completed his third year, and was familiar with 
the Greek Testament before he had passed his 
ninth. Timothy Dwight learned the alphabet 
at a single lesson, .and read the Bible very dis- 
tinctly before he was four years old. Hannah 
More in babyhood slipped through the incipien- 
cies of her education no one knew how, and 
was reading fluently before her parents, who 
were instructing her older sisters, discovered it. 
Richard Watson at six years took up the study 
of Latin, and about the same age read eighteen 
volumes of general history, and hungered for 
more. Voltaire said he composed poetry in the 
cradle ; and Dudley A. Tyng read mature Latin 
authors at six years, receiving at that period a 
prize copy of Virgil for his proficiency in read- 
ing it. Before Goethe was ten he wrote several 
languages, meditated poems, invented stories, 
and had considerable familiarity with works of 
art. Robert Hall at nine years was devouring 
"Butler's Analogy," " Edwards on the Will," 



Brilliants. 103 

and similar profound works. Pascal at thirteen 
was solving on stones in the street problems in 
geometry, though he had never seen a book on 
the subject. At sixteen he wrote an essay on 
Conic Sections, which the astute Descartes pro- 
nounced excellent. Isaac Newton, who was a 
dull boy, but a precocious youth, mastered the 
mathematics and philosophy of Descartes be- 
fore he was twenty. Bacon at sixteen formed 
the plan of overturning the philosophy of Aris- 
totle taught in the universities, and Edmund 
Burke at nineteen planned a refutation of the 
metaphysical theories of Berkeley and Hume. 
Calvin wrote his "Institutes" at twenty-five, which 
were a few years later enlarged, but not other- 
wise changed. Stillingfleet published his " Iren- 
icum," his great work on Church government, 
at twenty-four ; and Grace Aguilar, the tal- 
ented Jewess, published more than a dozen 
volumes, and died at thirty-one. Melanchthon 
received his bachelor's degree at Heidelberg 
at fourteen, at seventeen was Doctor of Philos- 
ophy, at twenty-one Professor of Ancient Lan- 
guages, and at twenty-four published his most 
celebrated theological treatise, which he lived 
to see pass through seventy editions, and which 



104 Diamonds f U?ipolisked and Polished. 

Luther declared worthy of a place among " ca- 
nonical books." Dr. Andrew P. Peabody gradu- 
ated at Harvard at fifteen years. Byron at 
twenty published his satire on " English Bards 
and Scotch Reviewers." Irving wrote for the 
press at nineteen, and at twenty-six issued his 
" Knickerbocker." Pope wrote his " Ode on 
Solitude " at twelve, his " Pastorals " at sixteen, 
and his " Essay on Criticism " at twenty. Ma- 
caulay wrote poetry of some merit, at fourteen. 
W. C. Bryant at ten penned poems which were 
printed in the country papers, and at nineteen 
completed his " Thanatopsis," considered by 
many the rarest gem of his gifted genius. 

These examples show that a large number 
of illustrious persons were children of prema- 
ture development, and instead of gliding into 
obscurity attained a celebrity far in advance 
of their years, and which they ever afterward 
maintained. 

And it cannot be said that their genius or 
their literary undertakings necessarily abridged 
their career. Their term of years compared 
favorably with their less gifted and less liter- 
ary contemporaries. Isaac Newton completed 
a very active and buoyant career at eighty-five ; 



Brilliants. 105 

Irving, though never well, lived on to seventy- 
seven ; and Hannah More, whose fertile genius 
never slumbered, attained her eighty-ninth year. 
Leibnitz died at seventy, Bolingbroke at sev- 
enty-three, Goethe at eighty-three, Voltaire at 
eighty-four, Edward Everett at seventy, and 
Humboldt at ninety years — all precocious chil- 
dren. Bryant is still hale at seventy-eight. 
Lord Bacon died at sixty-five, Burke at sixty- 
seven, Robert Hall at sixty-six, Pope at fifty- 
six, Calvin at fifty-five, and Matthew Henry at 
fifty-two. Richard Watson, who never saw a 
well day, died at fifty-two ; while Melanchthon, a 
gentle blue-eyed shadow, lived to be sixty-three. 
The profound Pascal fell at thirty-nine, the 
early victim of asceticism ; and the gifted Tyng 
at thirty-three, from a sad accident. 

It is probable that Melanchthon, Calvin, Hen- 
ry, Hall, Watson, Grace Aguilar, and others, 
represented by Fletcher, Pollok, and Henry 
Kirke White, shortened their days by incessant 
study and insufficient physical exercise. Mr. 
Fletcher's long- continued and oft-repeated fast- 
ings, his intense and incessant application to 
the pastorate, with his books and his pen, shun- 
ning every thing that savored of recreation, 



106 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

cast, on the one hand, a healthful reproof on 
the idle and voluptuous living of his time, but 
sapped prematurely the fountain of life, and 
abridged a most saintly and brilliant existence. 
Days of labor in the field occasionally, or of 
harmless sport in the forests, on the rivers and 
lakes, casting off all thoughts of toil arid study, 
would probably have added bright and fruitful 
years to his earthly career. John Milton, Rich- 
ard Watson, Kirke White, and many others, 
spent whole nights over their books notwith- 
standing the earnest protestation of friends, 
paying afterward the sad penalty which came 
in the form of enfeebled eyesight, nervous and 
debilitated constitutions, or an early death. 
Daniel Webster said he had " a genius for 
sleep," and if other brilliant minds had sys- 
tematically cultivated this genius, not a few of 
them would have lived happier and toiled 
longer. Neglecting the development of their 
physical forces, their "intellects were to their 
bodies like hot fires which burn out the fur- 
naces wherein they glow and blaze." It is 
also certain that another class, represented by 
Byron, who died at thirty-six, and Edgar A. 
Poe, who fell at thirty-eight, destroyed them- 



Brilliants. 107 

selves, like the conqueror of the East, by reck- 
lessness and dissipation. 

But while we have thus shown that this 
brilliant premature development is not neces- 
sarily the prelude to an early grave, we do not 
suppose that we have satisfactorily accounted 
for the mediocrity of the masses of precocious 
children. Those who rise to such eminence 
as to have their names recognized in all the 
world are to the masses, even of their own 
class, as rich diamonds are to the sands upon 
the shore. We doubt not the much larger 
portion of prematurely brilliant children die 
early, not a few of whom fall the unconscious 
victims of parental ambition. Gifted with extra- 
ordinary capacity, they are pressed beyond en- 
durance, and go down suddenly, like a shooting 
star. 

A precocious child should never be goaded 
to study, but at times retarded and encouraged 
to play. No one knows how, when, or where 
such a child learns its lessons, but its recita- 
tions are usually good. If there is an apparent 
failure, it generally arises from an aversion 
to systematic study, preferring to devour one 
book, or master one science at a time, instead 



108 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

of advancing with a class moderately into sev- 
eral. They not unfrequently wander outside 
of the regular course which they are expected 
to pursue, and often in this way lose laurels 
they might easily win. Richard Watson's great 
love of play, w T hich his fragile frame so greatly 
needed, led his excellent mother to remind him 
of the length and difficulty of his classical stu- 
dies, and the necessity of closer application, to 
which he invariably responded, " I can say my 
lesson." Fearing he was not sufficiently dili- 
gent she applied to his teacher, and found, to 
her surprise, that his progress was highly satis- 
factory. The mind of such a person gathers 
knowledge from books and nature like a sponge 
gathering water — literally sucking in all it 
touches. 

Precocious and brilliant children have often 
appeared to their parents and teachers, who 
could not understand them, as obstinate and 
disobedient. With a deep-seated and all-con- 
trolling genius for science, poetry, navigation, 
art, mechanics, or literature, they have been 
unable to command any interest in the occupa- 
tion or pursuits marked out for them by others. 
And no amount of admonition, or even forcible 



Brilliants. 109 

restraint from the legitimate bent of their 
minds, could dampen their aspirations. Pe- 
trarch's father, to insure the success of his son 
at the law, cruelly burned, in his presence and 
in spite of his screams and sobs, the poetical 
library he had industriously collected. But all 
this did not make the son a lawyer or prevent 
his becoming a poet. Alfieri was long delayed 
in the march of his genius by the misguided 
rigor of his uncle. Pascal was not allowed a 
book on higher mathematics, yet without a vol- 
ume or a teacher he mastered the system of 
calculations which the books contained. Co- 
lumbus was born a navigator, and no amount 
of discouragement could quench the ardor of 
his mind. 

This principle is well illustrated by a tale in 
the romance of King Arthur. A poor cowherd 
is represented as coming to the king request- 
ing that one of his sons be made a knight. 
" It is a great thing thou askest," responded 
King Arthur, who expressed himself anxious 
to know whether the request proceeded from 
the father or the son. Whereupon the old man 
replied, " Of my son, not of me ; for I have 
thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that 



1 10 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

labor I put them ; but this child will not labor 
for me for any thing that I and my wife will do, 
but always he will be shooting and casting 
darts, and glad to see battles, and to behold 
knights, and always, day and night, he desireth 
to be made a knight." The king becoming in- 
terested, ordered him to bring in all his sons. 
When they came he saw that twelve of them 
" were shapen much like the poor man ; but 
Tor was not like any of them in shape or in 
countenance, for he was much more than any 
of them, so King Arthur knighted him." 

In many families there springs up a little Tor, 
who in mind, purpose, and habit is quite unlike 
all the rest, and, because unlike them, he not 
unfrequently becomes a grief to his parents and 
others. He will not study law or medicine or 
follow the plow. If sent with a servant to the 
market to sell produce, like another genius he 
leaves the business with the servant while he 
departs to study mathematics or gather valua- 
ble information. Perhaps he is awkward or ill- 
formed, and of a retiring and somber disposi- 
tion. Genius generally buds and blooms in 
solitude. Boyle, when a boy pursuing his stud- 
ies, " would very often steal away from all com- 



Brilliants. 1 1 1 

pany and spend four or five hours alone in the 
fields thinking at random." Alfieri tells us that 
nearly every evening after sea-bathing he seated 
himself on the beach behind a high rock, which 
concealed from his sight every part of the land 
behind him, while before and around him he 
beheld nothing but the sea and the heavens ; 
the sun sinking into the waves lighting up and 
embellishing these two immensities. He there 
passed many hours of delightful rumination. 
La Caille, who ranked among the first French 
astronomers of the last century, was the son of 
a parish clerk. When but ten years old his 
father made him ring the church bell every 
evening, but the family was much annoyed that 
his return from the church should be at such a 
late hour. Severe whipping did not secure his 
prompt return. It was finally ascertained that 
after ringing the bell he was in the habit of sit- 
ting down in the steeple and watching the stars. 
His father continued to punish him, though he 
knew the cause of his loitering in the steeple. 
His love of science, however, could not be sup- 
pressed. He lived to publish lectures on math- 
ematics, mechanics, astronomy, and optics, which 
have passed through many editions. 



112 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

In these silent musings the mind of the min- 
iature poet revels amid gorgeous imagery ; the 
coming sculptor luxuriates amid forms of beau- 
ty ; the painter studies the ingenious blending 
of colors ; the musician dwells in the realms of 
sound ; the astronomer marks the appearance 
and progress of the stars ; and the philosopher 
communes with the intricacies of nature. 

Some minds sweep through the most pro- 
found and intricate branches of study with the 
strength and speed of a tornado. All prelim- 
inaries and incipiencies are overleaped, and 
what others have labored years to solve is by 
them grasped in an instant. Isaac Newton 
having examined and comprehended the philos- 
ophy of all his predecessors by the time he at- 
tained his majority, began at once to sound the 
unknown, and at twenty-three invented his 
method of analysis for calculating, known as 
fluxions. Experimenting on the construction 
of a telescope he was led into an examination 
of the nature of light, and at twenty-four made 
known the corpuscular, or what has since 
ranked as the Newtonian theory. Discovering 
at the same time by a few experiments the 
error of Descartes in employing ground glass 



Brilliants. 113 

for lenses in the telescope, his mind instantly 
turned to the true theory, that of employing the 
reflecting lens, and after many experiments he 
completed at the age of twenty-six the first re- 
flecting telescope ever made, and though it was 
only six inches long, it completely demonstrated 
the principles and theory he had conceived. 
Other minds had observed the pressure of solid 
bodies on the earth's surface, the tendency oi 
bodies to fall when set free in mid-air, and the 
uniform movement of the planets, and numerous 
theories to explain the subject had been pre- 
sented. Kepler, Archimedes, Galileo, Descar- 
tes, Gasendi, Leibnitz, Wren, Halley, and Hook 
had made approaches toward a proper solution 
of the subject ; but it remained for the mind of 
Newton to sweep deliberately through all their 
researches, retaining every thing valuable in 
the studies of each, and with experiment and 
mathematical demonstration set forth " the 
greatest scientific discovery ever made," the 
principle of gravitation, establishing the fact of 
the perfect identity of this force, whether mark- 
ing the falling apple or the circling planet. 
His Principia, an elaborate work, covering his 
entire system of Natural Philosophy, and which 



1 14 Diamonds ; Unpolished and Polished. 

La Place, the greatest philosopher of France, 
assigned "a pre-eminence above all the other 
productions of the human intellect," was com- 
.S "posed in the brief period of a year and a half. 
What others had toiled a score of years to in- 
vestigate this brilliant genius comprehended in 
a day. He shrank from no investigations cal- 
culated to elucidate science, and every-where 
proved himself the superior of his associates, 
unraveling their theories, and brushing away 
their errors. 

The late John M'Clintock, LL.D., considered 
eight minutes ample time to devote to the best 
filled daily journal, and his rapid intellect sped 
with equal velocity and ease through the most 
labored works of science and theology. In ex- 
amining the works of others his attention 
skipped from point to point with the ease and 
grace of a bird in the air, yet he never over- 
looked any thing of importance. He could sit 
down in a strange room, carry on a conversa- 
tion, and while another was arranging his toilet, 
glance so thoroughly through a new work he 
had picked up from the table as to close the 
volume and submit with credit to a close exam- 
ination of its contents and merits. He would 



Brilliants. 115 

read a treatise and write a critical review while 
another was loitering at the outset. It was 
this power of rapid analysis which made him 
every- where and on all subjects such a brist- 
ling encyclopedia of knowledge and talent. 

Some minds possess an ability for solving 
mathematical calculations which is truly sur- 
prising. The example of Truman Henry Saf- 
ford is exceedingly striking. "After a very 
brief attendance at a country school in Ver- 
mont, with an attenuated frame and feeble 
health, this boy, at the age of nine years and 
six months, produced the ' Youth's Almanac 
for 1846/ having made all the calculations of 
eclipses, the rising and setting of the sun, etc., 
without any assistance." At the age of thir- 
teen he also calculated without assistance the 
orbit of the telescopic comet of November, 
1848, and his calculations agreed with those of 
the best astronomers. A gentleman went some 
years since to see and examine him with difficult 
problems. He says, " The interrogatories were 
of a very difficult nature, resolved mentally and 
according to rules of science, and generally 
with great instantaneousness. For the pur- 
pose of testing the reach of his mind in com- 



fi6 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

putation he was finally asked to multiply in his 

head 365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,- 
365,365,365. He flew around the room like a 
top, and pulled his pantaloons over his boots, 
bit his hand, rolled his eyes in their sockets, 
until, in not more than one minute, said he, 
'133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,- 
225/ What was still more wonderful, he began 
to multiply at the left hand, and to bringj out the 
answer from left to right, giving first 133,491, 
etc. Here, confounded above measure," says 
Mr. Paine, " I gave up the examination." 

Here we have satisfactory evidence of the 
astounding fact, that a self-tutored boy multi- 
plied two sums, each composed of eighteen 
numerals, and stretching from units to quadrill- 
ions, in a minute of time, without slate or 
pencil, and gave the correct product. 

Some brilliant minds, in addition to won- 
drous perception, have also possessed a memory 
so capacious and retentive that every thing 
brought to the attention has been distributed 
and laid up in its appropriate place. Themis- 
tocles could name all the citizens of Athens, 
amounting to twenty thousand. Cyrus knew 
the names of all the soldiers in his army, which 



Brilliants. 1 1 7 

was also true of the Roman emperor Adrian. 
Napoleon had a wonderful memory. Dr. Ley- 
den could repeat any act of Parliament or sim- 
ilar document after a single reading. Pascal 
remembered all he read and all he thought, and 
Ben Jonson could at any time repeat, from 
memory, every line he had ever written on any 
subject. Sir Walter Scott repeated with accu- 
racy a poem of twenty-eight stanzas which he 
had heard but once sung, and that once occurred 
three years before. A blind man in Glasgow 
a few years ago could repeat the entire Bible 
from Genesis to Revelation. Voltaire is said 
to have once read a long original poem to the 
king of Prussia. The king had ingeniously 
placed a man of prodigious memory behind the 
screen, where he could hear all and not be ob- 
served. When the reading ceased, the king 
remarked that the production could hardly be 
an original one, as there was an Englishman 
present who could repeat every word of it. 
The Englishman came forward and repeated it 
word for word, to the astonishment of the poet, 
who tore the manuscript in pieces, but on his 
being made acquainted with the secret he was 
glad to copy it again from the second repetition. 



1 1 8 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

The late Alexander Von Humboldt is said 
to have possessed a memory that literally re- 
tained every thing. A gentleman just returned 
from a visit to an ancient city was describing 
to him some minute feature of the place, where- 
upon Humboldt corrected him, and the gentle- 
man acknowledged promptly the error, and 
inquired " When were you there ? " " O," said 
Humboldt, " I have never been there, but fifty 
years ago I meditated making a trip to that 
place, and accordingly read the descriptions of 
the place to prepare myself." So his mind 
had held the minutest description of an ancient 
city for fifty years so completely that he could 
correct the remark of one who had just ex- 
amined it. 

Edward M. Stanton, though a most industri- 
ous attorney and an indefatigable officer of the 
General Government, found time to cultivate 
general literature, and could repeat from mem- 
ory whole volumes from the works of Charles 
Dickens. Fanny Crosby, the blind poetess 
of New York, informed the author that on 
one occasion, when under a contract to write 
a hundred poems for a music publisher, she 
composed and corrected forty-five of them, 



Brilliants. 119 

embracing a great variety of topics, before she 
called her amanuensis, and then dictated them 
all, at a single sitting, for the press. 

We are not all brilliants in the sense that 
many of these were and are, at whose talents 
we have glanced in this brief chapter ; but the 
fact that we are not affords no ground for dis- 
couragement or suspension of effort. Nearly all 
possess more ability than they are conscious 
of, and more than they employ. The powers 
of some bloom early, and those of others late. 
Some burst at once into glory and strength, 
while others mature through prolonged and 
painful processes. Disraeli has well said, "The 
natures of men are as various as their fortunes. 
Some, like diamonds, must wait to receive their 
splendor from the slow touches of the polisher ; 
while others, resembling pearls, appear at once, 
born with their beauteous luster." 



1 20 Diamonds ; Unpolished and Polished. 




CHAPTER VI. 

DIAMONDS OF THE FIRST WATER. 

^OR ascertaining and expressing 
quality, a variety of methods has 
of necessity been introduced. The 
moral character of an individual is ascer- 
tained by comparing his inward experi- 
ence and life-work with the requirements 
of the moral law, and the quality is ex- 
pressed by such terms as truthful, pure, 
upright, righteous ; or by false, unholy, 
JL treacherous, wicked, etc. The precious 
f metals when taken from the mines, and 
when employed in the arts, are seldom either 
found or employed in their unalloyed state. 
Hence, some method for ascertaining and ex- 
pressing the true amount of pure metal which 
the admixture contains has been found neces- 
sary. Gold is reckoned by carats, which term 
the ancient Arabians borrowed from the Greek 
Kspdrtov, which signified a little horn, or the fruit 
of the carob-tree, and is equal to four grains, 



Diamonds of the First Water. 121 

or four of the smallest particles employed in 
weight. To ascertain the fineness of a gold 
ornament, the whole mass is supposed to be 
divided into twenty-four equal parts, and the 
gold is reckoned in proportion as its substance 
makes up the admixture, as ten, fifteen, twenty, 
or twenty-two carats. 

The weight of all precious stones is ascer- 
tained and expressed, like that of gold, in carats ; 
but, unlike gold, the exact weight of a diamond 
affords no estimate of its quality or value. The 
quality of a diamond is always expressed by the 
term "water," first water signifying first quality, 
second water second quality, third water third 
quality, etc. The most perfect diamonds are 
entirely transparent and colorless, resembling 
a drop of the purest water ; though colored 
stones, where the color is evenly distributed 
and the stone quite transparent, are also, as we 
have elsewhere shown, highly prized. 

While it is true that the beauty, the learning, 
the estimate, and the apparent good in society 
is largely superficial, there is still no consider- 
ation upon which all people lay such stress as 
genuineness of quality. However deceitful and 
treacherous the masses, no one is willing to take 



122 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

a counterfeit. However largely a lady deals in 
false curls, false flowers, false words and charms, 
when she pays a large price for a diamond she 
is careful to secure a stone of the first water. 
And when that subtle deceiver, grown gray in 
his artful inventions, purchases a gold-cased 
chronometer, he is scrupulously anxious to as- 
certain just how many carats fine it is, and how 
many jewels enter into its machinery. Hon- 
esty, truthfulness, and purity, are what all peo- 
ple inflexibly demand of all others. 

The qualities of some things are unchange- 
able, while those of others are susceptible of 
modification and improvement. As far as we 
know, the world of physics, including nature 
and art, is furnished with no method whereby 
the real quality of a diamond may be improved. 
Intense heat may dissipate the coloring, and 
the removal of the crust or the abrasion of its 
surface may disabuse the lapidary of erroneous 
impressions concerning its quality, yet no pos- 
itive improvement in the quality of the stone 
is made. It must forever remain as nature 
formed it, of the first, second, or third water, or 
of a still inferior quality. 

But the world of mind transcends the world 



Diamonds of the First Water. 123 

of matter, not only in the nature of its creations, 
but also in the facilities for improving the qual- 
ities of its creations. Though mind is invisible, 
impalpable, imponderable, it is still a positive 
essence, invested with a legion of forces, and 
capable of defection and remedy. In a previous 
chapter we have seen that the intellectual pow- 
ers are capable of favorable transitions ; and we 
hope to show in this that the moral qualities 
of the soul are also susceptible of radical trans- 
formations, changing the tenor of the life, rais- 
ing man to higher usefulness, purer pleasures, 
and a nobler destiny. 

All souls emerge into the realm of being in 
a lapsed or morally-discolored condition. For 
the sad cause of this we need not pause to 
inquire ; the fact itself is patent, and almost uni- 
versally conceded. The soul begins its career 
with an inborn love of evil, an imagination more 
or less distorted with an enfeebled and bewil- 
dered conscience, with decided leanings toward 
extreme selfishness, and with no true love to 
God,- or just conceptions of its highest hap- 
piness. 

It is a principle in philosophy that any thing 
set in motion will continue to move on in a given 



v 1 24 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

direction, unless some extraneous influence is 
brought to bear upon it. The tendency of 
every thing in nature is in keeping with 
this principle. It is the tendency of fire to 
burn, and to constantly increase the volume 
of its flame. It is the natural tendency of a 
fountain, or of a cataract, to continue to pour 
forth its waters. It is the tendency of a falling 
body to still fall, and increase its velocity as it 
passes through space. In like manner it is 
the tendency of the fallen soul to continue its 
downward wanderings, and, as the exercise of a 
power increases its strength, the faculties of 
a sinful mind are being continually hardened 
and intensified in evil, under accumulated guilt, 
and ever-increasing danger of deeper demorali- 
zation. It is on this principle that the smil- 
ing infant sometimes develops first into a 
rude boy, then into a vicious youth, and after a 
career of crime, growing blacker every revolv- 
ing year, dies at length in prison or on the 
gallows, a blasphemous outcast. So, also, the 
charming maid, whose polished form, express- 
ive eye, and enchanting tresses render her an 
object of attraction, tastes, at first sparingly, 
of forbidden pleasures until, demoralized, she 



Diamonds of the First Water. 125 

loses shame, reeks in vice, and falls, a discolored 
mass of unsightly putrefaction. 

Every soul becomes early conscious of its 
evil proclivities ; yet it fears them not, believing 
itself capable of holding them in check, and of 
employing them only at intervals and at pleas- 
ure. Scarcely any consider it likely that they 
shall descend to great evils, even with the 
freest indulgence. The rapid and appalling 
progress of indulged evil in the soul is very 
little considered by men, though all time has 
been strewn with the wrecks of humanity. The 
first impulse to lust, to thirst for power, and 
the early blush of youthful anger, appear harm- 
less ; yet all history proves that these, when 
indulged, culminate in debauchery, tyranny, and 
in seas of blood. Cain little imagined what 
would be the end of the jealous feeling he first 
indulged toward his amiable brother. When 
Absalom, that gay and beautiful youth, the 
ornament of his family and the pride of Israel, 
first launched his perilous bark on a forbidden 
sea, he had no conceptions of the crimes that 
should forever crimson his soul and blacken 
his memory. Iscariot saw only the good in his 
covetousness until eternal disaster burst upon 



126 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

his affrighted soul. When James Gardiner for- 
sook the home of his pious mother, he knew 
not the depths of profligacy to which his in- 
fatuated heart would lead him. Dr. Dodd did 
not expect to die a convicted forger, nor Dr. 
Webster a murderer. Arnold knew he was 
unscrupulous, yet he did not intend to be an 
open traitor. Kidd did not expect to be exe- 
cuted for piracy, nor Walker for filibustering. 
The moral diamond is sadly discolored, and so 
stealthy and fearful is the march of this black- 
ening taint, and so impotent all natural reme- 
dies, that its perils are truly appalling. 

Now, if these moral diamonds are universally 
found in a discolored condition, possessing no 
power of self-purification, but an invariable 
tendency to still greater defilement, then an ex- 
traneous method of moral recovery, containing 
every needed appliance, and adapted to all, was 
imperatively demanded. This, we believe, has 
been introduced by the Lord Jesus Christ. His 
person has been made the atoning sacrifice for 
human guilt, the only discolorment, which is 
instantly washed away when our faith accepts 
him. His example and law are set forth as the 
perfect rule of man's belief and practice, the 



Diamonds of the First Water. 127 

school for the education and guidance of his 
conscience. The truths of this scheme are 
entirely intelligible and within the scope of all, 
equally interesting to all, while the influences 
that attend them do affect and may be effica- 
cious in transforming and purifying all. 

Here, then, is the sublimest art in the uni- 
verse of God, infinitely transcending all human 
wisdom, and worthy of the profoundest study 
and admiration of all the intelligences of earth 
and heaven. In the laboratory of nature the 
Infinite Artificer has foiled us. We cannot 
number the ages, nor trace the processes by 
which he elaborated the transparent gem from 
its unsightly ingredients. But here his work, 
though mysterious, is imperfect. Diamonds are 
not all of the first water, and when one is discol- 
ored or fractured there is no remedy. Ages will 
not purify or heal it. But in the world of mind 
— "hear it, ye heavens, and be astonished, 
O earth ! " — in the world of mind so perfect and 
all-powerful is his method that he takes the 
most mangled, polluted, sin-blackened soul-gem 
in the entire circle of humanity, and in an in- 
stant of time transforms it into a diamond of the 
first water ! The discolored becomes transpar- 



128 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

ent, the sinner is made a saint, the demon of 
darkness is transformed into an angel of light 
and glory. 

This transformation unites, and sublimely 
links, the soul to God. Man then becomes in 
a high sense a " partaker of the divine nature," 
which purines his motives, ennobles his con- 
duct, and opens new. fountains of blessedness to 
his expanding soul. But however desirable this 
work to the Infinite Purifier, he never violates 
the principles of human liberty in its accom- 
plishment. Though he convinces all of its im- 
portance, this state must be as distinctly and per- 
severingly sought as the exact knowledge of the 
stars, or the possession of the gems in the mine. 

Through a vast variety of agencies, some of 
them the most simple imaginable, the benevo- 
lent Father seeks the awakening and recovery 
of his blinded offspring. Nature, providence, 
society, and the pages of written revelation, are 
alike rendered tributary and made vocal in this 
absorbing undertaking. Some are reached 
through the eye, others through the ear, and 
still others through the imagination. Some are 
awakened in the church, others in the solitudes 
of the forest ; some amid the roaring of the 



Diamonds of the First Water. 129 

storm on the boiling deep, and others amid the 
smiling of the landscape under a summer sky. 

A pious sailor, who had spent nearly all his 
life on the sea, informed the writer that he 
never was profoundly impressed with the great- 
ness of God and of his relationship to him until 
he was witnessing a post mortem examination. 
The sudden death of his comrade had not par- 
ticularly impressed him ; but the ship surgeon 
resolved, if possible, to ascertain the cause. 
He laid .open the casement that contained the 
vitals of the deceased youth, and as this hard- 
ened tar looked on and beheld the exquisite 
order and finish of that wondrous machinery, he 
was so overwhelmed with a sense of God's wis- 
dom and goodness, and his own vileness, that 
he instantly resolved to reform, and became a 
decided Christian. 

Some years ago a large institution of learn- 
ing was destroyed by fire, scattering cinders 
and half-burned papers for a great distance 
around. A few days later a farmer, who had 
ignored religion all his life, began to plow in 
his field near the remains of the burned build- 
ing. The day was warm. While resting his 

team he seated himself upon the beam of his 
9 



1 30 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

plow, and observing a scorched paper on the 
ground, he picked it up and read it again and 
again. It was a leaf from that much neglected 
book, the Bible, which he would not have read 
in the house or in the field if he had known 
what it was. His prejudice gave way, his heart 
bled, and not long after he told the affecting 
story of his awakening and wonderful recovery. 

A countryman was crossing, on a hastily pre- 
pared skiff, a turbulent stream, greatly swollen 
with recent storms. In the midst of the rush- 
ing current his frail bark went to pieces, and 
only with the most prodigious exertions was he 
enabled to regain the shore. Impressed with the 
magnitude of his perils in those awful moments, 
and the infinite love of Him who had lifted him 
again to land, he fell upon the shore to bemoan 
his sins, and surrender his life to the matchless 
Redeemer. 

Many years ago there resided in a thriving 
Connecticut village an intelligent young man, 
the chorister of a large church, but who had 
advanced into married life without personal 
piety. In the early hour of a lovely spring 
morning he was standing on the bank of the 
Farmington River. His eye glanced along its 



Diamonds of the First Water. 131 

shelving banks, where leaflets nodded and glis- 
tened with the rising spray. He surveyed the 
distant mountain, with its towering peak and 
changing hues, over which the orb of day was 
just darting his sparkling light, tinging crag 
and cloud with golden drapery. Awed with 
the harmony and exuberance of this enchanting 
scene, his soul involuntarily exclaimed, " There 
is a God, there is a God, and I am accountable 
to him f" He returned to his house greatly 
exercised, and sousrht retirement in his room. 
He read his Bible, walked the floor, but found 
no rest. To pray seemed impossible, but he 
resolved to try. In walking the room his eye 
caught a mark'on the floor, and he said, " At that 
point I will kneel and call upon God." Coming 
to the place, he fell upon his knees, and his 
agonized heart went out in strong desire, and 
soon an indescribable peace and sweetness 
filled his soul. He arose a renewed man. His 
experience became the key to his theology. 
Smitten with a sense of God's amazing and 
universal love to sinners, and burning with a 
desire to assist in saving them, he opened his 
doors to some pioneer itinerants, whose preach- 
ing and toils harmonized with his experience. 



132 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

He became a life-long pillar in the new denom- 
ination, and left the odor of his piety long dif- 
fused in the community. 

Colonel Gardiner was awakened in the slum- 
bering visions of the night. Rejecting the 
counsels of his youth, he ' had descended by 
gradual processes to appalling depths of dissi- 
pation. Talented and vivacious in nature, he 
became the center and acknowledged prince of 
his profligate associates. But the lessons of his 
pious mother could not be obliterated. In the 
slumbers of the night the history of Calvary 
was illustrated to his imagination, and the voice 
of God spoke to his soul. Weeping and prayer 
followed, the Holy Spirit transformed him, and 
the " prince of profligates " became the prince 
among Christian soldiers. His former pleasures 
became the objects of deadly abhorrence. His 
biographer says : " I cannot but be astonished 
that he should be so wonderfully sanctified in 
body as well as in soul, as that from that hour 
(his conversion) he should find a constant dis- 
inclination to and abhorrence of those criminal 
sensualities to which he fancied he v/as before 
so invariably impelled by his very constitution 
that he was used strangely to think and to say 



Diamonds of the First Water. 133 

that Omnipotence itself could not reform him 
without destroying that body and giving him 
another." 

Two hours of the early morning of each day 
he invariably consecrated to religious reading 
and prayer. If the army marched at six he 
arose at four, and if at four, he arose at two, 
that the culture of his soul should not be neg- 
lected. He married, and became a most ex- 
emplary husband and father. Dr. Doddridge 
thought him the most deeply humbled and 
devout communicant that ever took the sacra- 
ment at his hand. One of his own letters to a 
friend exhibits the manner by which he pre- 
pared for that solemn service. After listening 
to a preparatory sermon on Saturday preceding 
the day for the Lord's Supper he says : " I took 
a walk on the mountains over against Ireland, 
and I persuade myself that were I capable of 
giving you a description of what passed there, 
you would agree that I had much better reason 
to remember my God from the hills of Port 
Patrick than David had from the land of Jor- 
dan, and of the Hermonites, and from the hill 
Mizar. In short, I wrestled some hours with 
the Angel of the Covenant, and made supplica- 



134 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

tion to him with floods of tears and cries until 
I had almost expired ; but he strengthened me 
so that, like Jacob, I had power with God and 
prevailed. After such preparatory work I need 
not tell you how blessed the solemn ordinance 
of the Lord's Supper proved to me." 

We have been explicit in sketching the his- 
tory of this remarkable character that the 
reader may see that this discolored youth be- 
came unquestionably a diamond of the first 
water, and to disclose also the processes by 
which the wondrous change was effected. 

But the loftiest triumphs of Christianity must 
be sought among tribes most benighted and 
imbruted. Geographers describe a group of 
about two hundred and twenty-five islands, 
great and small, situated between the fifteenth 
and twenty-second degrees of south latitude in 
the South Pacific Ocean, as the Fiji Islands. 
Of this group ninety-five are inhabited, and are 
estimated to contain a population of from two 
hundred thousand to three hundred thousand 
persons, divided into hostile tribes, ruled by a 
king and by subordinate chiefs. Though situ- 
ated in a tropical region, endowed with the 
richest fruitfulness and the rarest embellish- 



Diamonds of the First Water. 135 

ments of nature, these islands lay for many 
centuries entirely untouched by the civilization 
and Christianity of the world. Discovered by 
Tasman in the seventeenth century, and visited 
by Cook and Bligh in the eighteenth, the civil- 
ized world obtained no definite knowledge con- 
cerning them until within the last fifty years. 
Some early travelers had described these sav- 
ages as a peaceful, happy, and somewhat virtu- 
ous people. About 1835 some English mis- 
sionaries, with Bible in hand, entered this 
unknown field. With the climate and soil of 
the region they were completely charmed. 
The seeds of . vegetables grew out of the soil 
in one day after planting, rare fruits and flow- 
ers covered the valleys and plains, and waved 
on the summits of the highest mountains ; but 
O how vile was man ! Every heart gloated in 
beastly enormity. Polytheism, polygamy, par- 
ent-murder, strangling of widows, infanticide, 
unstinted licentiousness, tyranny of woman, the 
horrors of inhuman and perpetual wars, all 
crowned with a dreadful passion for feasting on 
human flesh, which was frequently and horribly 
gratified. The inhabitants of one district had 
been from generation to generation preserved 



136 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

simply as food for their more powerful neigh- 
bors, and were regarded as wild game fattening 
for the market. Husbands often baked and ate 
their own wives. The chief king of the islands 
dwelt with his court on the island named Bau, 
and had at least six ovens for roasting human 
bodies, a score being sometimes cooked at a 
time, and the ovens seldom allowed to grow 
cold. 

Into this vortex of shocking inhumanities, 
this God-forsaken pandemonium of all fierce- 
ness and brutality, these pious, brave men 
entered to tell the story of redemption. Estab- 
lishing themselves as best they could, they 
toiled on for the recovery of that people ten 
years, amid difficulties, " abominations, and atroc- 
ities" such as no pen can describe. * In 1845 
they were cheered with such a manifestation 
of divine influence, sweeping over island after 
island, such quickenings of the human con- 
science and melting of calloused hearts, such a 
resurrection of exalted moral feelings, as have, 
perhaps, never been excelled in the history of the 
world. All classes, from king to slave, melted 
before it like wax in the fire. " Business, sleep, 
and food," said an eye-witness, "were almost 



Diamonds of the First Water. 137 

entirely laid aside," and some of the most atro- 
cious characters that ever blackened the record 
of humanity were restored to virtue and purity. 
Chiefs of tribes that had mocked at all remon- 
strance in their career of butchery now quailed 
under the sound of exhortation and prayer. 
Varin, chief of Saru, long dreaded as the most 
inhuman butcher of his race, and whose sweep 
in crime had been too shocking to contemplate, 
broke down in agony of soul most intense and 
overwhelming. By earnest supplication to Jesus 
of Nazareth this dreadful murderer was trans- 
formed into a loving and amiable man, ready to 
preach the truths he once rejected and despised. 
The capital of this barbarous empire was at 
length reached. Thakombau, the highest dig- 
nitary and king of all the Fijians, the head 
center of this carnival of human iniquity, en- 
throned in absolute dominion, feasting his wives 
and nobles on human flesh, was broken, as with 
a rod of iron, under the power of Christianity. 
After sorrow deep as his crimes had been 
enormous, after great humbling and crushing 
of his nature, he found peace, and stood up with 
uncovered head to confess his sins and glorify 
God before the chief men of his dominion. 



138 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

" And/' writes a missionary, " what a congre- 
gation he had ! Husbands, whose wives he 
had dishonored ; widows, whose husbands he 
had slain ; women, whose sisters had been 
strangled by his orders, and whose brothers 
he had eaten ; and children, the descendants 
of those he had murdered, and who had vowed 
to avenge the wrongs he had inflicted on their 
fathers ! A thousand hearts heaved with aston- 
ishment and fear" as this dreadful man arose to 
speak in behalf of Christianity. His conversion 
was followed by that of the principal members 
of his court.. The heathen temples were de- 
molished, the sacred groves cut down, and 
where the cannibal-feast had usually occurred 
in the great square they erected a Christian 
church. Truly these moral transformations are 
the wonder of wonders in human society, if not 
in the whole universe. 

But the finest purification and polish of this 
moral gem are not obtained in its first trans- 
formation from the power of evil. The measure 
and completeness of the work at that point 
vary in different individuals according to their 
amount of light, and the varying phases of their 
mental and moral constitutions. The work of 



Diamonds of the First Water. 139 

grace in the soul is always characterized by 
gradations, its progress being dependent on 
the faith and obedience of the recipient. As 
with the natural diamond, so this gem passes 
through numerous advancing processes ere its 
purest brilliancy is displayed. The history of 
the queen of all the gems of England may, in a 
sense, illustrate the work of grace in the soul. 
That celebrated gem is said to have been ob- 
tained from the ruins of Golconda more than 
two thousand years ago. From the Rajah of 
Oojein it passed to the successive sovereigns 
of Central India, and in the fourteenth century 
was by Aladdin added to the treasures of Delhi. 
There it remained in the possession of the 
ruling families of the empire until the conquest 
of the Persians under Nadir Shah, who saw it 
glittering in the turban of the vanquished king, 
and by artfully proposing an exchange of head- 
dresses gained possession of the jewel, bore it 
away, and named it Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of 
Light. Some time after Nadir Shah was as- 
sassinated, and the diamond passed through 
the hands of Ahmed Shah of Cabool to Shah 
Soojah, who with it purchased his liberty from 
the conqueror Runjeet Singh, the " Lion of the 



140 Diamonds, Unpolished and. Polished. 

Punjaub," in 18 13. In 1849 the Punjaub was 
annexed to the territory held by the East India 
Company, and a part of the stipulation "was 
that the renowned diamond should be surren- 
dered to the Queen of England, and it accord- 
ingly came into her possession July 3, 1850. 
When placed on exhibition in the Crystal 
Palace of London in the following year, not a 
few were disappointed that the glass model of 
it should apparently excel the wonderful gem 
itself. Its brilliancy only appeared when sur- 
rounded by a profusion of vivid lights, and with- 
out these it presented but a lusterless mass. 
Its defects, however, arose from its imperfect 
polish. It had been cut by its savage owners, 
according to the style of India, into a table 
diamond, the style least adapted to the full dis- 
play of its excellence. After due deliberation it 
was intrusted to Mr. Costar, the distinguished 
Jewish" lapidary of Amsterdam, with instructions 
to bring it to its highest perfection, and his 
experienced workmen converted it into a brill- 
iant, successfully removing every blemish, since 
which it has ranked among the rarest jewels of 
the world, excelling alike in purity and fire. 
Now, every marked transition through which 



Koh-i-noor, the Queen of English Jewels. 




As cut in India over 2,000 years ago. 





Front view : as recut by Mr. Costar. Back 



view as recut. 




Sice view ns recut by Mr. Cusrar. 



Diamonds of the First Water. 141 

this jewel passed was an improvement, and at 
each time it was supposed by its possessors to 
have been brought to its highest perfection. 
Washing away the dirt that had for thousands 
of years concealed its luster in the mine was 
decided progress. Cutting it into a table dia- 
mond, exhibiting a large, brilliant surface sur- 
rounded by a hundred tiny facets, was a vast 
improvement on its entire past, and the dia- 
mond-cutters of India thought its glory com- 
pleted. In this state it remained for centuries, 
until the scientific appliances at Amsterdam 
advanced it immensely beyond all that had 
gone before. 

So every advance in the work of grace is a 
decided triumph, affording a better exhibition 
of humanity, and is mistakenly supposed by 
some to be very nearly the climax of human ex- 
cellence. When John Bunyan had abandoned 
his grossest immoralities, and contracted the 
habit of attending church, he concluded he had 
attained the summit of all pious ambition, and 
boldly declared that he could now " please God 
as well as any man in England." The tribes 
of Israel found the land so much better on the 
eastern bank of the Jordan than it had been 



142 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

in the wilderness of Sin that they foolishly con- 
eluded to remain there. But it was better with 
those who, having crossed the Jordan and con- 
quered Jericho, passed on to Ai, and then to 
Gibeah, and rested not until they ate the rich 
fruits in the heart of the land. That sublime 
transformation, when the human jewel emerges 
from the miry pit, takes rank among the gems 
of God, exhibiting the first moral brilliancy of its 
wondrous nature, vastly excels every thing that 
has gone before, and in the raptures of the hour 
the triumph seems complete.. But subsequent 
cleansings and baptisms, with the frictions 
attending a toilsome and often perilous career, 
greatly intensify its brilliancy. Edward Payson 
experienced during the last weeks of his life, 
and when nearly paralyzed in body, such revela- 
tions of divine grace as he had never expe- 
rienced during the twenty years of his fruitful 
ministry. He exclaimed, "God is able to make 
Christians happy without any thing else. I am 
a cripple, and not able to move, yet I am hap- 
pier than ever I was before in all my life, or 
ever expected to be ; and if I had believed this 
twenty years ago I might have been spared 
much anxiety," 



Diamonds of the First Water. 143 

Thoughtful experience proves that there are 
no intellectual or moral elevations attained 
which are not overtopped by other dazzling 
summits beyond, affording new incitements to 
the ascending soul. And whatever of apparent 
error, springing from unavoidable infirmity, 
may here seem to mar the transparency of this 
gem, it will be lost in its translation to the 
richer spheres of the Eternal. When His 
fashioning hand shall have brushed the last 
blemish from the jewel and its setting, and in 
a higher sense than before it is again said in 
heaven, " Behold, the man is become as one 
of us," it will fully appear that he is indeed 
a diamond of the first water. 



144 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished 




CHAPTER VII. 

SECLUDED JEWELS. 

HE world is not so much the exhi- 
bition of great, as it is the aggre- 
gation of small things. It is not 
the great mountains that make its 
surface ; nor the mammoth trees that 
m make its forests ; nor the great fortunes 
that make its ' commerce ; nor the great 
jewels that constitute its treasures. The 
great things have their mission and place, 
but reckon only as a small part of the 
whole. The grandest mountains run in 
isolated ranges, the mammoth trees stand in 
separate groups, the princely fortunes look 
down on seas of poverty, and the rarest dia- 
monds are so few in number that their names 
are easily remembered. If only the educated 
read the volume, the circulation is limited ; 
and if only the millionaires purchase the im- 
ported wares, the demand is small. Knolls, 
hills, plateaux and plains make up the most 



t\ 



Secluded Jewels. 145 

useful portions of the earth's surface, leaving the 
occasional peak as a part of nature's esthetic 
trimming of the locality, a bold and striking 
freak of creative skill. The rolling billows of 
the mighty deep with all their strength display 
only the blue, while all the colors of nature are 
seen in the scattering drops from the cloud. 
Great rivers are splendid as they wind their 
silver currents around the base of the mount- 
ains, and sweep on in silent grandeur to the 
ocean ; but the hillsides and plains must be 
fertilized by a thousand trickling rills, and 
moistened by innumerable showers, or all will 
come to desolation. The culmination of a great 
event is observed and chronicled by all, yet a 
hundred thousand silent, incipient steps led to 
the important result. Trivial things are im- 
portant, and small matters potent, as well as 
those considered great. The igniting of a spark 
has led to a conflagration, the utterance of a 
thought to a revolution, the removal of a pebble 
to the rush of an avalanche. 

And what is true in the world of matter is 
true also in the world of mind. The great 
discoverers, inventors, and reformers comprise 

but an insignificant fraction of general society. 
10 



146 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

The great philosophers study out the sciences, 
but millions of ordinary minds must take them 
up and teach them to the masses, or little prac- 
tical benefit will result to the world. The great 
navigators explore the seas and discover the 
islands, but they must be followed by armies 
of plain, industrious colonists before civilization 
can rear her domes and conduct her schools 
and commerce. The greatest military chieftain 
is wholly impotent unless supplied with bat- 
talions and munitions. The great Reformers 
fearlessly uttered the truths, and set the exam- 
ple, but the Reformation resulted mainly from 
the toils and prayers of many thousand obscure 
persons, who preached the doctrines through 
the factories, workshops, and kitchens, and 
sung the poetry on the farm and around the 
fireside. Diamonds glittering alone in the 
mountain cliff are none the less gems, though 
no human eye has been dazzled with their 
brilliancy. Rich fruits often grow on neglected 
plains, and flowers of exquisite beauty bloom 
in secluded glens, whither no human being 
comes to admire their colorings or inhale their 
fragrance. So all the rarest qualities of the soul 
bud and bloom in solitude and in the humblest 



Secluded yew els. 147 

walks of life. Merle D' Aubigne, in his " History 
of the Reformation," has proven that Protest- 
antism existed before the Reformation, and was 
often during the dark ages stronger than the 
Papacy. The Pope and his adherents could 
only maintain their corrupt tenets and prac- 
tices by a perpetual slaughter of the lovers of 
truth, who inveighed against their abomina- 
tions. Obscure men and women in the privacy 
of their own homes, and in monasteries, waited 
in genuine simplicity and faith on the true 
God, "lifting up holy hands without wrath o:* 
doubting." Some talked of their experience in 
the deep things of God, and when hurled into 
prison, wrote out their confessions, hiding them 
in holes in the wall, some of which were not dis- 
covered until centuries afterward. Luther had 
a few earnest supporters among the great, but 
he had thousands of them among the plain and 
unpretentious. The Elector's protection was a 
valuable boon in his perilous work ; but the 
hungering of the thousands of plain men for 
the Word of God, their hearty reception of 
the truth, and the sublime exemplifications of 
their faith, were among his most important 
auxiliaries. 



148 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

Speculations and heresies originate with the 
profound or the brilliant, whose talents only 
could give them currency ; but the plain peo- 
ple, who constitute the masses in all countries, 
are eminently conservative, and do not easily 
drift from their habitual moorings. The Ger- 
mans of this century are a striking example of 
this truth. A few of their scholars, turning 
abruptly away from the traditional habits of 
their countrymen, are trying to open a new 
channel of thought for themselves and their 
brethren. The Germans have long been char- 
acterized by an excessive belief in the super- 
natural and marvelous. Instead of guarding 
against excessive credulity, these theorizers 
have boldly undertaken to sweep away every 
thing that savors of the supernatural, even the 
Bible itself. Happily, their books are read by 
a few of their own class only, the masses of the 
people taking no interest in them whatever. 
Extensive revivals of religion occur, in which 
thousands are converted, who toil under the 
shadow of the university, which is the center 
of rationalism and infidelity. 

The world is perhaps as deeply indebted to 
the influence of those who toil unheralded in 



Secluded Jewels. 149 

secluded circles as to the geniuses who occupy 
more conspicuous spheres. The modest, silent 
influence of a gifted and true woman has ten 
thousand times laid the foundation for brilliant 
public achievements ; and the secret influence 
of a woman has ruined multitudes. The influ- 
ence of a mother vastly outmeasures all others 
in the molding of society. No matter what her 
faith, her conduct, her character, the bent of 
her mind, or the laws of her household, her 
power is supreme and well-nigh unlimited. 
Humanity is cast into her lap to be nurtured 
and fashioned for time and eternity. If ele- 
vated and saintly in mind and life, she lifts her 
offspring sublimely heavenward. Misguided, 
prejudiced, or imbruted, she is still mother, the 
supreme priestess of the circle, planting in the 
deepest soil of the soul seeds that must germ- 
inate into a harvest of crime and interminable 
woe. 

The mother has vastly the advantage of the 
father in molding the mind of the child. His 
influence is occasional, hers unremitted. He 
must provide for the hive, hence his mind is 
absorbed with business, and with occupations 
lying wholly outside the nursery, while the 



150 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

highest ambition and glory of a true woman 
are linked to the success of her children. 
Home is her empire, where she rules much of 
the time without a rival. That a pious woman 
is sometimes opposed and baffled in her toil by 
a wicked and dissipated husband we all know, 
yet it will be difficult to find the example where 
prudence and piety ruled the mind of the wife 
and mother, who did not in the end conquer. 

Nothing on earth is so fruitful in the forma- 
tion of character, and creates so much happi- 
ness or misery, as the nature of one's home ; and 
home takes its character chiefly from the ma- 
tron who presides there. One thing is clear, 
man cannot make home. He can build the 
house, purchase the furniture, gravel the walks, 
plant the shrubbery, but it is still the veriest 
desert of gloom without the attractions of 
woman ; and unless she who is called to fill it 
is a being worthy of the name, it is a dismal 
Sahara ever afterward. Occasionally one rises 
in after years above the atmosphere of his early 
home, but the vast majority breathe it to their 
lives' end. Some men desert an unpleasant 
home, though usually for something worse ; but 
little children cannot desert it, and all its con- 



Secluded Jewels. 151 

versation, tempers, habits, and management 
enter into their education and assist in the for- 
mation of their characters. It is no wonder 
that girls are thoughtless and young men vile 
whose early years were spent in disordered 
homes, where foul speech, profanity, the clash- 
ing of evil tempers, dissipation, and uniform 
disregard of God were the general rule. How 
can a bad mother rear good children ? and who 
can correct them when she has finished their 
education ? 

Girls more generally inherit the qualities of 
their fathers, and boys of their mothers. Jacob, 
the supplanter, was the complete daguerreotype 
of his mother Rebekah. Her counsels were 
seldom for a moment questioned, and never 
rejected. Every deceptive spark from the ma- 
ternal steel produced a speedy and reciprocal 
flash in the mind of her boy. Walter Scott's 
mother was a superior woman, highly educated, 
and a great lover of poetry and painting. Th^ 
mother of Byron was haughty, ill-tempered, and 
violent, and her bad qualities were all sadly 
perpetuated in her gifted son. The mother of 
Napoleon I. was distinguished for beauty and 
energy. He once said : " I owe principally my 



152 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished 

subsequent elevation to the manner in which 
my mother formed me at an early age." He 
also adds : " My opinion is, that the future good 
or bad conduct of a child entirely depends upon 
the mother." Lord Bacon's mother was noted 
for superior intellect and deep piety. The 
mother of Nero was a murderess, and what 
better could have been expected of her son ? 
Washington's mother was gifted and true. 
John Wesley was reared by a mother remark- 
able for the very qualities that rendered her 
son illustrious. The mother of the present 
generation of Beechers was a lady of great 
piety and worth. Her whole soul was enlisted 
in the training of her children. Many years 
ago, when residing on the east end of Long 
Island, she made this significant entry in her 
diary : " This morning I arose very early to 
pray for my children, especially that my sons 
may be ministers and missionaries of Jesus 
Christ." After a life of toil she died in great 
peace, but the Church has witnessed the con- 
version of her eight children, and has ordained 
her five sons to the Christian ministry. The 
mother of the younger Tyng was distinguished 
for force of character and mighty faith in God. 



Secluded Jewels. 153 

When gasping for breath on her dying bed her 
husband expressed anxiety about the children, 
to which she promptly responded, " My dear, 
give yourself no uneasiness about my children, 
God will bring them all to himself; that is his 
covenant with me." They were long since 
added to the Church of God. Bishop Watson 
believed that he inherited religious feelings 
from his excellent mother. Was not the same 
thing true of Jonathan Edwards, Timothy 
Dwight, John and Charles Wesley, Edward 
Payson, Archibald and William J. Foss, Alfred 
Cookman, and many others whose lives were 
brilliant ornaments in the world, reflecting also 
the highest honor on those that reared them ? 

When you see a young man with an open, 
frank countenance — one elegant in manners, 
brilliant in mind, correct in his intercourse 
among men — you may safely conclude that he 
had a pure, loving, high-minded mother. The 
luster of a great jewel has been beaming upon 
him from the earliest dawn of his being. His 
infant slumbers were perhaps under the roof of 
a hovel, but the great heart that throbbed 
against his temples was purer and richer than 
the diamond. He is attracted by the beautiful 



154 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

in nature and art both by sight and sound, be- 
cause his mother was alive to it and encour- 
aged this propensity in her child. He sees a 
moral sublimity in honest industry, self-sacri- 
fice, fortitude, and intelligent devotion to the 
true God because these sentiments were 
breathed in the atmosphere of his early home, 
and illustrated by the blaze of a daily example. 
That mother's influence will never be lost. 
After living, like the diamond in the sand, 
unnoticed, she may fall early and molder in 
an obscure grave, yet the germs she has plant- 
ed in the mind of her boy will live and thrive. 
Every thing exquisitely modest or benevolent 
or kind or pure he meets in all his life will re- 
mind him of his mother, and touch a delicate 
chord in his soul that will never cease its 
vibrations. 

How many glittering diamonds shine in the 
seclusions of the nursery and the sick-room ! 
Shut in from the gayeties of general society, 
from the bustling scenes of the outside world, 
and often from the public sanctuary, they toil 
unnoticed over a precious charge through weary 
years. But she that weaves garlands of pre- 
cious thoughts and hangs them in the gallery 



Secluded Jewels. 155 

of an infant soul shall never lose her reward. 
To instruct that little motherless girl and soothe 
the sorrows of that crippled boy are matters 
which He that sitteth in the heavens will ob- 
serve and take pains to reward. Especially let 
no mother feel that her work in seclusion can 
remain unnoticed or be unimportant. She toils 
in retirement, but time and eternity will reveal 
the nature of her exertion to the everlasting 
shame or glory of her that labors. In that 
infant form slumber the germs of powers that 
shall rise to strength and unceasing impor- 
tance. The thoughtless observer may think it 
"a slight thing to clasp those tiny hands in 
prayer," and lead that opening mind in thought 
and song ; " yet few scenes on earth are more 
truly sublime," or fraught with more weighty 
results. That hand may yet grasp the scepter 
that sways an empire ; that voice may address 
unnumbered thousands on earth, and sins: 
among the archangels in heaven ; that mind 
may yet decide a nation's policy, and explain 
the mysteries of eternity ; " that soul shall thrill 
through everlasting ages with the bliss of 
heaven," or writhe amid the endless torments 
of hell. Can any thing be considered small or 



156 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

unimportant that enters into the solution of so 
vast a problem ? 

A young woman sat thoughtfully in a little 
home in the city of New York. She was beau- 
tiful in person, accomplished in mind, and 
saintly in life. She had been reared in a cul- 
tivated family, and, though possessed of talent, 
learning, and dignity sufficient for a queen, she 
entertained sensible views of life, and chose to 
become the wife of an intelligent and pious me- 
chanic. Several years roll pleasantly away, and 
as we find her again there is a brilliancy in her 
eye, a hectic flush upon her cheek, and a hol- 
low cough that talks a language we cannot mis- 
understand. She is the mother of a beautiful 
boy, who has inherited her own versatile nature, 
and as he comes in from the street she hears 
him utter the name of Jesus in an irreverent 
manner. This is to her a matter of deep solici- 
tude, and as her husband returns from his toil, 
she speaks of this circumstance with deep emo- 
tion, and inquires, " What shall we do to save 
our dear boy ? " Her husband replies, " Well, 
my dear, we cannot shut him in entirely from 
the street ; his little form needs exercise ; we 
must teach him better, and pray for him as we 



Secluded yew els. 157 

have done ; that is all that we can do." Weeks 
pass, and one day as her husband returns from 
his toil he finds his wife very weak, lying on 
the bed ; but she murmurs not, and thinks not 
of herself. Her first words are, " Husband, I 
think I have hit upon a plan that will save our 
boy. We will teach him a passage of Scripture 
each day, and we will carefully select those pas- 
sages that contain the name of Jesus, and in 
this way I think he will learn to reverence the 
Saviour." The pleasant task was at once be- 
gun and continued until her early death. 
When she felt the cords of life unbinding she 
called him to her bedside, and, taking his hand 
in hers, she said, " My dearest boy, your mother 
is going to die, going to heaven. I want you 
to promise her that you will continue this prac- 
tice of committing the Scriptures through life ; 
pray every day to God, and never under any 
circumstances take the Saviour's name in vain." 
His little breast heaved, his lip quivered, and 
his voice faltered, yet he made the solemn 
promise. Years have passed since this touch- 
ing scene occurred, yet the promise of that 
hour has not been forgotten. That boy is now 
a studious, prayerful youth, and his father said 



158 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

to us not long since, " I think his mother has 
anchored him to the throne." Queens have 
had more earthly splendor, more notoriety and 
fame than this saintly young woman, but if 
during her brief sojourn on earth she "an- 
chored " the soul of that brilliant boy to the 
throne, has she not accomplished more than 
many a queen ? Toiling in her modest way 
in her own chosen retirement, unheralded 
and unseen by the great, bustling world, who 
does not perceive that she was still a brilliant 
jewel ? 

But woman's influence is not confined to the 
nursery, nor does it operate solely in the capac- 
ity of a mother. As a sister, friend, and com- 
panion, she fills a sphere of almost infinite im- 
portance. How the gentleness and sunshine 
of an amiable sister quiets the turbulence of a 
family of boys. She is a jewel from which they 
all gather luster. The occasional presence and 
correspondence of a virtuous and esteemed lady 
friend has often quickened to lofty sentiments 
and purposes, and saved from discouragement 
and dissipation. How many clergymen, states- 
men, and authors owe half their usefulness and 
success in life to their noble wives ? 



Secluded Jewels. 159 

We know there have been many doleful 
chapters truthfully written on the domestic in- 
felicities of men of genius. We cannot doubt 
that science, literature, religion, and all the 
purest interests of society, have often suffered 
because a vain, haughty, indiscreet, or unculti- 
vated woman was wedded to the philosopher, 
the poet, the clergyman, or the statesman. 
Socrates had Xanthippe for his wife, a woman 
as crooked in nature as in name. The wife of 
Bishop Cooper in a freak of passion ruthlessly 
consigned to the flames the manuscript for his 
Lexicon, over which that industrious student 
had toiled many years. Whitelock's wife de- 
stroyed many of his valuable papers. John 
Milton was a mighty man at blank verse, but 
really weaker than ordinary men in arranging 
matrimonial alliances. His domestic infecili- 
ties were numerous and long continued. Per- 
haps these unhappy examples had their influ- 
ence in leading Newton, Locke, Leibnitz, Bayle, 
Hobbes, Hume, Gibbon, Smith, Boyle, Voltaire, 
Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Michael Angelo, 
Lamb, Akenside, and Arbuthnot to decide in 
favor of celibacy. 

But marriage, where prudence and affection 



160 Diamonds, Unpolished mid Polished. 

are blended, is no obstacle to the best attain- 
ments with either of the sexes, and our literary 
bachelors ought to know that Xanthippe died 
thousands of years ago, and has never had a 
resurrection. Married men more frequently 
than bachelors rise to celebrity. The inspira- 
tion imparted by a virtuous and gifted woman 
has nerved many a man in defeat ; her patience 
has quieted the turbulence of his breast ; her 
intuitive perception discovered the malady that 
was wasting his soul, and promptly suggested 
a remedy, and when all the world was dark and 
forlorn her sympathy has afforded a refuge and 
a solace. When a boy we read Irving's touch- 
ing essay entitled " The Wife," and wept over 
it. We have read it again and again in later 
years, and always to weep and feel improved. 
Our observation coincides with his, that "a mar- 
ried man falling into misfortune is more apt to 
retrieve his situation in the world than a single 
one, partly because he is more stimulated to 
exertion by the necessities of the helpless and 
beloved beings who depend upon him for sub- 
sistence, but chiefly because his spirits are 
soothed and relieved by domestic endearments, 
and his self-respect kept alive by finding that. 



Secluded Jewels. 161 

though all abroad was darkness and humilia- 
tion, yet there is still a little world of love at 
home, of which he is the monarch. Whereas a 
single man is apt to run to waste and self-neg- 
lect, to fancy himself lonely and abandoned, 
and his heart to fall to ruin like some deserted 
mansion for want of an inhabitant." We, too, 
as did that gifted author, have often had occa- 
sion to remark the fortitude with which women 
sustain the most overwhelming reverses of for- 
tune. " Those disasters which break down the 
spirit of a man and prostrate him in the dust 
seem to call forth all the energies of the softer 
sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to 
their character that at times it approaches to 
sublimity. As the vine, which has long twined 
its graceful foliage about the oak, and been 
lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy 
plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round 
it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its 
shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered 
by Providence that woman, who is the mere 
dependent and ornament of man in his happier 
hours, should be his stay and solace when smit- 
ten with sudden calamity, winding herself into 

the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly sup- 
11 



1 62 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

porting the drooping head, and binding up the 
drooping heart." 

A young American woman, reared in afflu- 
ence, married early against the wishes of her 
friends, and removed with her husband to a 
large city. In a few months he was prostrated 
with disease, which rendered him a helpless 
invalid for life. Poverty soon stalked through 
their modest apartments. What was to be 
done? She had little knowledge of business, 
had not been inured to toil ; but she was too 
brave to be discouraged. She began to ply the 
needle, but for many days received only six 
cents per day for ten hours' toil, with which she 
purchased a loaf of bread, on which, with a cup 
of water, they entirely subsisted. Seventeen 
long years, with unflagging exertion, she paid 
the large demands of householders, purchased 
medicines, reared an only child, consuming the 
midnight hour in painful endeavors to keep 
famine from her door, and then paid for an 
expensive burial of the remains of him to whom 
she plighted her early affection. During all 
those years she was so occupied in providing 
subsistence, and in ministering to her invalid 
companion and her child, that she never entered 



Secluded Jewels. 163 

a church or visited a friend ; yet she murmured 
not, and would not acknowledge herself weary 
or disappointed with life. Was she not a jewel ? 
The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the noblest 
men of France ; but it must never be forgotten 
that through all his deepest trials and sufferings 
he was unwaveringly supported by a heroic 
wife of solid piety and culture. She nobly ad- 
hered to his principles when it cost the sacrifice 
of splendor, of friendships, of family comforts, 
and of life itself. Liberated from the prison at 
Paris, where she had suffered, in ignorance of 
her husband's fate, more than a year and a half, 
and in feeble health, she was inflexible in her 
determination to find the Austrian dungeon 
and carry such consolation as she was able to 
the wounded spirit of her persecuted husband. 
Sending her son across the waters to President 
Washington for safety, with her two daughters, 
just blooming into womanhood, she crossed in 
disguise the Austrian frontier, forced her way 
into the presence of the emperor, and when she 
could not obtain the liberation of her husband, 
demanded the privilege of sharing his captivity. 
To the filthy dungeon of Olmutz she bravely 
descended to share the sorrows of the choice 



164 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

of her youth. In this dreary vault of darkness 
and woe she lingered twenty-two months, con- 
tracting disease which broke her constitution, 
and she went down in the meridian of her life. 
She died in her forty-seventh year, but had 
lived long enough to exemplify virtue, generos- 
ity, patriotism, love of liberty, and piety. She 
trained her offspring to virtue and heroism. 
Her biographer pronounced her "the soul of 
her numerous family, the support of the poor, 
the ornament of her country, and the honor of 
her sex." 

Martin Luther had, in his genial and noble- 
minded " Lord Kate," as he familiarly termed 
her, a mine of inexhaustible moral wealth. He 
uttered what a great many other men have felt 
when he said, " I would not exchange my 
poverty with her for all the riches of Croesus 
without her." He said, " The utmost blessing 
that God can confer on a man is the possession 
of a good and pious wife, with whom he may 
live in peace and tranquillity." 

Sir William Hamilton would probably have 
failed as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in 
the University of Edinburgh had not his wife 
heroically supported him, toiling with him on 



Secluded yew els. 165 

numerous occasions all night on the prepara- 
tion of a lecture he was to deliver the following 
morning. Many a blind advocate and minister 
has consulted books through the eyes of his 
wife, without which he would have been im- 
potent, if not speechless. 

We have read of women leaving their fire- 
sides and their children, searching the snow- 
covered prairies for many miles in search of 
their perishing companions, swooning with joy 
on finding them alive. They have gone to the 
bloody battle-field and carried away in their 
arms, amid the iron hail, the bleeding forms of 
those they loved, and from whom they could 
scarcely be separated. More than one has gone 
to the prison-cell and exchanged habits with her 
life-companion, that he thus disguised might 
pass the guard and once more breathe the air 
of freedom, leaving her to bear the rigor of 
prison treatment. Immense fortunes have been 
expended to find the remains of a shipwrecked 
companion. The wife of John Rogers followed 
him with all her children to his execution, sup- 
porting him with her presence and prayers in 
his dying agony. How many ministers would 
have hopelessly broken down in their toils and 



1 66 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

privations had it not been for the Christian for- 
titude of their excellent wives ? How many- 
thousands of men now esteemed good and true 
would, under pressure, have abandoned their 
principles, changed their habits, and abolished 
their family religion, but for the fact that they 
knew their wives would never surrender ? As 
the sills and foundation-stones, which are quite 
concealed, in a cathedral are just as important 
as the arch or tower, so these silent and invisible 
influences are useful in molding and upholding 
society. The conclusion of the wise man is, 
" Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, 
and obtaineth favor of the Lord." 

Woman is usually an angel of mercy, and 
rarely sinks so low as to have no tears to shed 
over the unfortunate and suffering. Her sym- 
pathies are disinterested, wide as the world, 
and lasting as her being. The little Jewish 
maid, torn from, her early home, and made a 
slave in the palace of Naaman, forgot all resent- 
ment in her desire to have her new master 
cured of his leprosy. The finest feelings have 
often manifested themselves among the women 
of savage tribes. The well-told story of Poca- 
hontas, the Indian girl of Virginia, intercept- 



Secluded yew els. 167 

ing the deadly blow from the white man by the 
interposition of her own naked head, if true, is 
a striking example. 

Mungo Park, a Scottish traveler, and one 
of the early explorers of Africa, gives in his 
journal one of the most touching instances on 
record. After suffering a tedious imprisonment 
in the capital of one of the barbarous tribes, 
confined in a room with a wild boar, he made 
his escape. Some time after in his wanderings 
he struck the Niger at Sego, a considerable 
city lying on both sides of the river. Com- 
munication with its different parts was kept up 
by large canoes, which were constantly crossing 
and recrossing. The crowd of passengers was 
great, and Park waited two long hours for an 
opportunity to cross, but was then disappointed, 
as orders came from the chief forbidding him 
to pass over. Hungry, dispirited, and faint, far 
from home and succor, in the midst of a strange 
land filled with barbarians and wild beasts, he 
turned, in the midst of a dreadful storm, under 
the boughs of a tree to spend a doleful night. 
But his moan attracted the ear of a poor negro 
woman returning from her toil in the field. 
With the instincts of a true woman she con- 



1 68 Diamonds y Unpolished and Polished. 

ducted him to her miserable hut, gave him food, 
and spread a mat on the floor as an apology for 
a bed, on which he was invited to sleep. There 
were several in the family, and the females con- 
tinued their toil of spinning cotton till late at 
night. Their labor was interspersed with song, 
and one of the young women composed and 
sung one for the benefit of the suffering stranger. 
Literally translated it ran thus : 

" The wind roared, and the rain fell; 
The poor white man, faint and weary, 
Came and sat under our tree ; 
He has no mother to bring him milk, 
No wife to grind his corn." 

Then came the chorus, in which they all joined 
with a sweet and plaintive air : 

"Let us pity the poor white man, 
No mother has he." 

Park declared that no incident in his travels or 
his life so affected him. He was so smitten 
with this unexpected kindness that his weary, 
weeping eyes refused to sleep ; and when he 
departed in the morning he cut two brass but- 
tons from his waistcoat and gave them to his 
sable benefactress, the only recompense he was 
ever able to confer. 



Secluded Jewels. i6g 

How many brilliant little diamonds glitter in 
nomes of poverty, scattered through the ham- 
lets, and amid the solitudes of the backwoods. 
Their thoughts and tones are richer and fairer 
than their cheeks, their tempers and examples 
sweeter than the odor of roses. Clad in coarse 
garments, and trained to self-denial, not cor- 
rupted by the flatteries or luxuries of the world, 
they live to Him that redeemed them, the joy of 
their parents, shedding the luster of their piety 
on all around them. Such were Elizabeth Wal- 
bridge, the Dairyman's Daughter, and Little 
Jane, the Young Cottager, whose histories have 
been so beautifully written by Legh Richmond. 

The daughter of a French prisoner, though 
in feeble health, followed on foot over a hun- 
dred leagues the carriage that conveyed her 
father to prison. For months she toiled inces- 
santly to procure his release, but died of over- 
exertion soon after his discharge. 

When Gustavus III., King of Sweden, was 
one day riding on horseback through a village 
near his capital, he saw an interesting peasant 
girl drawing water near the roadside. As he 
was thirsty, he alighted and asked her for a 
drink. With artless simplicity and kindness 



170 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

she lifted the pitcher to the lips of the monarch, 
who, having satisfied his thirst, courteously ac- 
knowledged her politeness, and becoming more 
and more interested in her, said, 

" My girl, if you would accompany me to 
Stockholm I would endeavor to provide you a 
more agreeable situation." 

" Ah, sir," replied the girl, " I cannot accept 
your proposal. I am not anxious to rise above 
the state of life in which the providence of God 
has placed me ; but, even if I were, I could not 
for an instant hesitate." 

" And why ? " inquired the king, a little sur- 
prised. 

" Because," answered the modest girl, " my 
mother is poor and sickly, and has no one else 
to assist or comfort her under her many afflic- 
tions ; and no earthly bribe could induce me to 
leave her, or to neglect the duties which affec- 
tion requires me to perform." 

" Where is your mother ? " inquired the mon- 
arch. 

"Yonder in that little cabin," replied the girl, 
pointing to a wretched hovel not far away. 

The king entered, and found on a rude bed- 
stead, covered only with a little straw, an aged 



Secluded Jewels. 171 

woman weighed down with infirmities and suf- 
ferings. Moved at the sight, he said feelingly, 

" I am sorry, my poor woman, to find you in 
so destitute and afflicted a condition." 

" Alas, sir," she responded, " I should be in- 
deed to be pitied had I not that kind and 
attentive girl, who labors to support me, and 
omits nothing she thinks can afford me relief." 
And then, wiping away a tear, she added, " May 
a gracious God remember it to her for good ! " 

Noble, noble girl ! fairest, brightest jewel of 
the realm ! she could not be attracted from the 
hovel of her suffering mother by all the splen- 
dors of a king. Gustavus was so touched with 
her constancy that he left a purse of money, and 
shortly afterward settled on her a pension for life. 

A pious lad in a New England town, attend- 
ing the district school, felt a rising desire to do 
good to his playmates. Accordingly he an- 
nounced that there would be a prayer-meeting 
in the school-room at noon during the inter- 
mission. Some of the scholars laughed, and 
jeered at his meetings, but others were awak- 
ened and wept. Some of the parents hearing 
of the little noonday meeting attended, and 
were deeply wrought upon. Then the ministers 



172 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

of the place came in and assisted, and over 
sixty were hopefully converted. Was not that 
lad a little jewel ? 

These secluded jewels are found every-where, 
among both sexes, in high life and low, on sea 
and land. A reckless young man forsook the 
home of a pious mother, and resolved to be an 
infidel. He lived as if he had no soul to cult- 
ure and save, and madly said in his heart, 
" There is no God." Dissipated and daring, to 
escape his friends and all religious influence he 
went to sea as a sailor. But lo ! the captain 
of the vessel was a pious man. Every day he 
assembled the crew, read to them the Script- 
ures, and offered prayer. When the captain's 
eye glanced from the book to the little audi- 
ence, the young man thought it pierced his 
inmost soul. Day after day he trembled under 
a load of guilt until it became intolerable, when 
he ventured to unburden his mind to the cap- 
tain. The captain took him to his room, wept 
tears of joy over him, told him the story of 
Calvary, encouraged and trained him in piety, 
and finally returned him to his mother a re- 
formed and converted young man. Are not 
such captains the rarest pearls of the sea? 



Secluded yew els. 173 

Some wonder what people are, what those 
think, and how those feel who dwell a great 
many steps down the ladder of society below 
themselves. Now the truth very likely is, they 
think, and feel, and desire, and aspire, and 
hope very much like all the rest of the world. 
Perhaps they have more knowledge or sense 
on some points than we, perhaps less. Theii 
sorrows, and joys, and fears do not greatly dif- 
fer from ours. There are gems of exquisite 
polish often found far down among the pooi 
and the lowly. A clergyman in New York 
city passing down a busy street encountered a 
sooty, noisy chimney-sweep. He had often 
seen such men, and heard their noise, and 
thought them a miserable, hopeless class in 
society. Curiosity and pity prompted him to 
more carefully inspect the stranger. Drawing 
near to him, he said, 

" My friend, this must be a hard life that you 
live." 

" Hard ? " said the sweep. " O no, sir !" his eye 
brightening as he spoke ; " life has its joys, and 
when it is over we shall go to rest." 

" Do you ever go to church ? " said the 
minister. 



1 74 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

" O yes, sir ; every Sabbath and two nights 
in the week, sir," responded the sweep. 

" What church do you attend ? " said the 
minister. 

"OI always attend street ! I was con- 
verted there twenty-two years ago, and I can 
never think of going anywhere else until I go 
to heaven." 

The minister found, to his great surprise, that 
the poor chimney-sweep was a member of his 
own denomination, older in religion than him- 
self, and apparently quite as likely to gain the 
Eternal City. The circumstance proves that 
we cannot safely judge concerning men's hearts, 
their hopes, joys, or prospects, by the texture 
of their garments or the lowliness of their oc- 
cupation. Many whom the proud and gay 
habitually overlook, and consider as of trifling 
importance, as dwellers in the crevices of the 
earth, are nevertheless secluded gems, glitter- 
ing in their appointed spheres, and will not be 
overlooked by the great Master of the universe 
when he comes to make up his jewels. 



Value of the Diamond. 175 



vt. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

VALUE OF THE DIAMOND. 



,EMS, like all other commodities in 
the market, experience the usual 
fluctuations of commerce. There 
never has been, and, from the nature of 
the case, never can be, an invariable value 
attached to a diamond. The general sup- 
ply, the necessities of the merchant, and 
the fancy and ability of the purchaser, 
must ever regulate the price. One rule 
for estimating the value of the diamond 
has been to increase its value in propor- 
tion to the square of its weight. According to 
this theory, if a stone of one carat be worth 
twenty dollars, one of two carats would be 
worth eighty dollars, and one of a hundred 
carats would be valued at two hundred thou- 
sand dollars. Very large, diamonds and fancy 
stones, that is, stones of decided color, such as 
blue, red, or green, are much sought after, and 
often bring fabulous prices. The Regent or 



1 76 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

Pitt Diamond, which Napoleon I. wore in the 
pommel of his sword, was once sold for over 
half a million dollars, and is now valued at 
much more. The Braganza, an immense stone 
from Brazil, and placed among the crown jewels 
of Portugal, if a genuine diamond, (which many 
doubt, and the Government will not allow it to 
be examined,) is perhaps the largest and most 
valuable stone in Europe. It weighs in the 
rough about eighteen hundred carats, and has 
been estimated at twenty or thirty millions. 

The diamond known as the Mattan, held by 
the Rajah of Mattan, in Borneo, has been the 
cause of a bloody war. It is a stone of the first 
quality, weighs three hundred and sixty-seven 
carats, and in shape resembles a pear. The 
Dutch offered the Rajah two gunboats fully 
armed and equipped, and two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars in specie for the stone, but he 
refused to part with it, saying that on its pos- 
session depended the fortunes of his family. 

Some have proposed to estimate the value 
of soul-diamonds on the principle laid down 
above— to weigh them instead of numbering, 
and conclude according to their place in the 
scale of fashion, politics, wealth, literature, or 



Value of the Diamond. 1 77 

religion. Great and decided successes they 
regard as evidences of a great and valuable 
soul, while the lack of brilliant achievements 
they construe as resulting from the poverty or 
worthlessness of one's nature. We once heard 
a minister say that he very seriously questioned 
whether all souls were alike valuable. We 
thought the idea worthy of some reflection, and 
carried it in mind for a considerable period. 
Now whether all souls are alike valuable or not, 
they certainly all sprang from a common source, 
are all invested with similar capacities and re- 
sponsibilities, have common wants, woes, and 
dangers, and are amenable to the same tribu- 
nal. While it cannot be shown that in the 
comprehensive march of divine providence any 
are overlooked or neglected, it is readily ob- 
served that, in many particulars at least, the 
infinite Father has treated all with equal atten- 
tion and love. True, all do not dwell on the 
same acre, nor fill the same office, nor wear the 
same garments, nor subsist on the same food ; 
yet every sphere has its pleasures and advan- 
tages, and every portion of the globe its natural 
luxuries and attractions, which upon the whole 

are not very unevenly distributed. For the 
12 



1/8 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished, 

comfort of the most feeble and benighted, as 
well as the enlightened, the Creator contin- 
ues to compound the atmosphere, load the 
clouds with moisture, cover the earth with fruit 
and verdure, burnish the sun, and stud the 
heavens with orbs of brilliancy. Mines of 
wealth have been discovered in all latitudes, 
and the phenomena of the changing seasons, 
the clashing elements in the tornado, the cata- 
ract, and the volcano, with all the intricacies of 
nature and providence, may be studied by the 
inhabitants of every zone. 

In the sublime scheme of human redemption 
the interests of all souls are considered with 
equal care, and the same beneficent provision 
is made for each, yesus Christ by the grace of 
God tasted death for every man, and the good 
tidings of his wondrous work he has command- 
ed us to carry into all the world, and publish to 
" every creature." 

None of us are sufficiently informed to decide 
certainly as to what is the most important or 
valuable quality of mind. All the works of 
Omnipotence are marked by variety, and Infi- 
nite Wisdom has found place and scope for 
every kind and grade of ability. The stars 



Value of the Diamond. 1 79 

are not all of the same magnitude, and there 
is infinite variety of size and form running 
through all the tribes of the lower animals, and 
of the plants and minerals, yet who will tell us 
which is most important? Man is too frequently 
clannish, considering those unlike himself as 
less useful, if not altogether worthless. Egotism 
sometimes characterizes the cultivated special- 
ist. His pursuit towers, in his opinion, above 
those of all others. Some can scarcely perceive 
why all are not mathematicians, or chemists, or 
botanists, or linguists, or antiquarians, or his- 
torians, or geologists. Others are disgusted 
with theorizers, and have no patience with ab- 
struse pursuits. They wonder why others are 
not practical and useful ; why these men of 
parts are not physicians, or lawyers, or teach- 
ers, or missionaries, or explorers, or statesmen, 
or bankers, or merchants, or artists, or artisans, 
or miners, or farmers. Why spend weary 
nights and unrequited years over Greek roots, 
fossils, or fine-spun theories ? The sordid, 
purse-proud lord of mammon, consumed with 
the passion of hoarded wealth, looks with in- 
ward scorn on the career of a colporteur, a 
Bible-reader, or of one whose activities are gen-. 



1 8o Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

erously spent in the promotion of education, 
benevolence, or religion. The zealous clergy- 
man is to him a man with a large skull, but 
utterly void of any proper conception of his 
opportunities, who wastes in poverty the years 
which might have been turned to the amassing 
of money. The indolent and the voluptuous 
undervalue the industrious poor, whose toils 
provide their daily comforts. Silly notions of 
fashion and caste exclude some from the brighter 
fields of culture and comfort who are naturally 
in no sense inferior to those who exclude them. 
As in nature every animal, from the polyp to 
the king of the forests, has his sphere, so have 
all the lawful, though diversified, faculties and 
pursuits of the human mind. The Creator 
compasses the ends of his lofty administration 
in the employment of these multiplied diversi- 
ties. Science needs men like Columbus, Kane, 
Newton, Franklin, Audubon, Agassiz, Darwin, 
and Hitchcock. Art advances under the direc- 
tion of such minds as Palladio, Michael Angelo, 
Arkwright, Watt, Fulton, and Howe. Litera- 
ture languishes without its Butlers, Macaulays, 
Milmans, its Miltons, Edwardses, and Irvings. 
Religion needs its Luthers, Wesleys, Howards, 



Value of the Diamond. 1 8 1 

Paysons, and Olins. Law requires a Hale, a 
Kent, a Marshal], and a M'Lean. Government 
needs a Wilberforce, a Pitt, a Washington, and 
a Gladstone. Now all these characters moved 
in different spheres, and exhibited different tal- 
ents, tastes, and temperaments ; yet who will 
tell us which was most useful, whose soul was 
most valuable, and whose least important ? 

And if the soul of the reader or of any other 
person has not yet evinced any very striking 
qualities, it is far too early for us to conclude 
that it is of any less importance than the no- 
blest intellect that has graced the world. In 
the fourth chapter of this volume we have pre- 
sented a multitude of examples in which dull 
children developed into brilliant individuals. 
These were plants that "flowered late," some 
awaking to sterling thoughtfulness in advanced 
life ; but suppose through lack of favoring op- 
portunities, healthy stimulus, or from some 
physical imperfection, one remains through life 
in mediocrity, or even far below it, there is still 
no evidence but that in the ages to come it 
may tower among those whom we now regard 
as the most gifted and brilliant. These quick- 
ening, adventitious circumstances of time can 



1 82 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

only advance the most enlightened about half a 
century beyond the benighted, leaving all eter- 
nity to develop those who have not forfeited 
the exalting favor of the world's Redeemer. 
Every soul is invested in some degree with 
these six faculties : perception, reflection, mem- 
ory, conscience, will, and affection. Now as 
every faculty is capable of eternal development, 
arid every soul has started on a race so endless 
and wonderful, though some appear to-day to 
be loitering, it is far too soon to predict as to 
which shall attain to the most lofty achieve- 
ments, or which is to be of least use to the 
Creator or the creature. This immortal jewel, 
like the natural diamond, is not to be valued 
chiefly for what it has done, but for what it 
intrinsically is. 

The real value of the soul is evinced in the 
unflagging energy of its nature. The mind is 
so essentially active that from the point of its 
creation it probably never for one moment 
ceases in its interminable and ever-enlarging 
activities. Early in its career it becomes ab- 
sorbed in some pursuit, which it follows amid 
varying fortunes with a persistence that exhibits 
the native sublimity of its being. This un- 



Value of the Diamond. 183 

bounded energy marks its career in every grade 
and sphere of human life. The persistent strug- 
gles of the most menial laborer disclose the glim- 
merings of human greatness. With him life is 
a daily fact of toil and suffering, illuminated by 
no promise of ease or elevation. Having long 
since abandoned hope of improving his condi- 
tion, conscious that life must become more and 
more a burden, toil a more galling necessity, 
earth with its fading rays less attractive and 
eternity more dreaded, still to his shovel or 
hod he bravely clings with a grasp only re- 
linquished with life itself. Occasionally one, 
baffled, exhausted, disheartened, chooses stran- 
gling rather than life ; but this is the rare ex- 
ception, as most prefer 

" To brave the ills they have 
Than fly to others that they know not of." 

Take another view of man. He has scaled the 
barriers leading to place, and sits enthroned in 
power. Millions of subjects are at his feet, and 
billions of wealth within his grasp. Here he is 
intoxicated with wine, surfeited with luxuries and 
with praise, and enervated with wasting pleasures. 
But all these do not destroy the native energy 
with which he is endowed. He studies to in- 



1 84 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

crease his wealth, improve his court, to per- 
petuate his throne. He would fain annex the 
continent to his dominion, or conquer the world, 
and lies down at length to weep or die under 
defeats and misfortunes. 

Is man a well-bred soldier, clad in the tinseled 
livery of an empire, studying the art of war, or 
marshaling his forces ; is he a banker, planning 
far-reaching schemes of finance ; a merchant, 
opening untrodden fields for his commerce ; or 
an advocate at the bar, the same indomitable 
energy is exhibited. 

If his toils are in the world of letters this 
native greatness is still more brilliantly illus- 
trated. Here reason, feeble and uncertain, is 
girded and quickened by discipline. Memory 
is schooled and taxed to the utmost. His im- 
agination pries into the mysteries of all worlds, 
and weaves in dazzling drapery the facts and 
fictions of time and eternity. In the great 
world of literary thought how he plunges and 
soars ! By most protracted and patient colla- 
tion and analysis he evolves science from the 
intricate and shattered plains of nature. He 
classifies all material substances from the foun- 
dation of the earth upward. He searches the 



Value of the Diamond. 185 

dusky past, writes history from fossils, and, 
peering through the realms of immensity, marks 
the invisible track ol comets and distant worlds. 
Forty years man bends his mind under the 
examination of a scientific problem, until wasted 
form and wrinkled brow succumb ; but his son 
or successor takes it up, and rests not until the 
mystery is solved. 

The value of this jewel could be urged from 
its earthly prowess, and from the astonishing 
exhibitions of its genius. Though fallen and 
semi-deposed man, still counts himself the lord 
of creation, and unceasingly wrestles with the 
giant forces of nature. He seeks to control and 
utilize all material energies, and often changes 
the face of the surrounding country. He has 
revolutionized the vegetable products of a con- 
tinent, recklessly pursued and blotted from the 
plains of nature entire species of animal exist- 
ence, while every-where he has more or less in- 
vaded the original harmonies of nature. Often 
beaten by the lower animals and made the sport 
of the elements, he gathers skill in defeat for 
subsquent prowess and triumphs. The mam- 
moth monster of the deep, sought out in his 
far distant retreat, and, pierced by his dart, 



1 86 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

seeks in vain to elude pursuit by plunging to 
cavernous depths ; while on land the lion, the 
rhinoceros, and the elephant crouch under his 
authority. He searches the bowels of the earth 
for curiosities and treasure ; converts seas and 
rivers into highways for the sweep of his com- 
merce ; outstrips the eagle in aerial voyages, 
and harnesses the lightning to his rushing car. 
If it be said that his triumphant march has 
been misdirected, and attended with as much 
evil as good, we would add that these perver- 
sions of his nature do not detract from its in- 
trinsic value, but afford the more painful illus- 
trations of its transcendent greatness, even in 
deepest bewilderment and guilt. 

Who can contemplate the multiplied examples 
of invention and genius, thronging the track of 
man in all the world, without being impressed 
with the incalculable value of the soul ? Its 
triumph over matter proves that it is essentially 
different from and above it. The ten thousand 
inventions to save and cheapen human toil, 
from the spindle to the quartz-mill, and Lie 
cylinder-press to the silent stretch of the me- 
tallic cable spanning the great deep and made 
the track for electric-winged thought, display 



Value of the Diamond. 1 87 

but in part the inventive skill of his fruitful 
intellect. Hundreds of thousands of models of 
inventions have been deposited in the patent- 
offices of enlightened nations, and yet each 
generation, as if standing on the shoulders of 
their predecessors, eclipse all who have gone 
before. 

The value of the soul is also displayed in its 
power of hoarding ideas. The memory is a vast 
invisible book, whose pages contain in legible 
and indelible characters the records of every 
impression, thought, and action of which the 
soul has ever been cognizant. In the hurry of 
life many pages and whole chapters may lie 
unseen for years ; yet innumerable and well- 
attested examples prove that nothing is obliter- 
ated. By the power of association or contrast, 
by the indescribable workings ol the mind in 
sleep, in periods of excitement or of sickness, 
and under the wonderful quickenings of the in- 
tellect experienced in drownings, and in other 
forms of approaching death, every link of the 
wondrous past has been swiftly examined. No 
distance of time or space, or of varied and mul- 
tiplied studies or undertakings, has in any sense 
eclipsed or dimmed the record, 



1 88 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

The great value of this jewel appears also in 
the enduring strength of its affection. The 
soul, in a manner we cannot describe, discerns 
and selects its kindred spirits, to whom it clings 
amid joys and woes, and upon whom it lav- 
ishes the wealth of its affection. Damon and 
Pythias, two citizens of ancient Syracuse, were 
so devoted to each other's interests that when 
Pythias was condemned to die by Dionysius 
the elder, Damon generously took his place, 
allowing his friend to go and adjust his busi- 
ness. On the day appointed for the execution 
Damon was led out to die, but Pythias arrived 
in time to bear his own penalty. Dionysius 
was so touched with these acts of constancy 
that he liberated both, and their names have 
come down to us as the synonym of exalted 
friendship. So closely were the souls of David 
and Jonathan knit together that all the bribes 
and threats of King Saul were unable to divide 
them. 

This intelligent affection, which distinguishes 
man and elevates him above other tribes of cre- 
ation, is not destroyed by earthly separations, 
by lapse of time, by misfortune or death. It 
clings with tenderness to the memory of the 



Value of the Diamond. 1 89 

departed, and weeps at the grave which con- 
tains the moldering remains of buried love. 
The aborigines of America sent tidings to their 
deceased friends by the birds of the forest ; and 
the kings of Dahomey to this day deliver im- 
portant messages to a servant, charging him to 
convey them to their friends in the spirit-land, 
and to facilitate his progress cause him to be 
quickly beheaded. 

Washington Irving clung to the memory of 
his gentle and accomplished Matilda Hoffman 
with all the ardor of a youthful lover for more 
than fifty years after her burial, admitting no 
others to her place in his affections ; and when 
he expired, at nearly seventy-seven, there was 
found on a table near his bedside an old and 
well-worn copy of the Bible, containing her 
name on the fly-leaf written in a delicate lady's 
hand. This had been his daily companion 
through scores of years. 

The intrinsic value of the soul is further 
evinced in its capacity for communion with the 
Eternal. All the tribes of animated existence 
enjoy the bounties so freely lavished upon 
them, but man only is capable of ascertaining 
the source whence they flow, of appreciating 



190 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

and communing with the infinite Giver. The 
human soul inquires persistently after God, 
and will not rest without some conceptions of a 
Deity and some form of devotion. If knowl- 
edge of the true God cannot be obtained, some 
invisible creation of the imagination, a shining 
orb, a reptile, or a graven image, is introduced. 
A few perverted minds only, ignoring the loft- 
iest faculty of their beings, lose themselves in 
the labyrinths of atheism and deism, either de- 
nying a supreme Existence, or ridiculing all 
forms of worship. But these unceasingly suffer 
from this unnatural trammeling of their noblest 
aspirations ; from the felt worthlessness of all 
earthly acquisitions, and the emptiness of un- 
hallowed enjoyments. The human soul is a 
boiling caldron of emotion, affection, and de- 
sire, coupled with an energy so persistent as 
to disclose its natural relationship to Him who 
never slumbers, and who wearies not in the 
ceaseless sweep of his eternal activities. It 
can find rest and felicity only in the proper 
employment of its powers in harmony with and 
in the study of its great Original. And it is 
this capacity for entering into holy communion 
with the august, invisible Deity, which evinces 



Value of the Diamond. 191 

similarity of nature and loftiness of desire, 
which is the key to ultimate destiny. This we 
pronounce the noblest faculty of the soul, and 
the surest mark of its transcendent value. 

The exalted nature of the human soul is 
further displayed in its unfeigned and cease- 
less longings for immortality. This instinctive 
love of life and dread of death, which has char- 
acterized alike the civilized and the barbarian 
in every age, the Creator has deeply implanted 
in the human soul. This his goodness would 
not have allowed if annihilation were our nat- 
ural tendency. As far as we can judge, no 
other creature on earth has any fitness for im- 
mortality. The brute unquestionably has mind 
of a low order, which may be destined for im- 
mortality, but which apparently makes no prog- 
ress in that direction. Every creature in the 
world, save man, appears to attain early the 
highest summit of its ambitions. The cattle 
graze on the hillsides, drink of the rivulet, and 
sleep in the shadow of the trees, and think of 
nothing beyond. They are not concerned 
about the past or the future. They think not 
of the stars that shine above them, nor of the 
nature of the earth beneath them, or of the 



192 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

glory of Him whose presence pervades im- 
mensity. The bee constructs its comb with 
mathematical precision at its first attempt, and 
evinces *no additional skill or desire ever after- 
ward. The instinct of the bird, displayed in 
its first nest, the selection of its food, and in its 
earliest song, receives no subsequent additions. 
The silk-worm spins its amount of silk, lays its 
egg, and dies, without the slightest discover- 
able aspiration for any thing beyond. 

But all man's present attainments are simply 
beginnings, and stepping-stones to something 
higher. Those intellectual giants who are be- 
lieved by the masses to have meddled with all 
knowledge, and to have compassed the whole 
realm of thought, are, in their own estimation, 
as yet, the merest pigmies, struggling every- 
where with mysteries and obscurities, and but 
just beginning their education. The illustrious 
Newton near the close of life said, in substance, 
that however he might appear to others, to 
himself he seemed a mere school-boy, who had 
perchance picked up a few brighter pebbles 
than his playfellows, while before him were 
spread out the vast oceans of truth which he 
had not had time to explore. Though excelling 



Value of the Diamond. 193 

others in examining the intricacies of nature, 
he found no resting-place or limit to the rising 
desires of his penetrating mind. It cannot be 
that the Infinite Creator has formed so tran- 
scendent a jewel for annihilation, or failed to 
provide the means by which it may yet attain 
to viewless heights of knowledge and purity. 
A thousand times better to have been born 
without eyes, and all the organs of sense, with- 
out speech, or thought, or desire, than to catch 
a ravishing glimpse of this wondrous universe, 
hear its melodies, taste its sweetness, become 
just enough acquainted with its splendors to 
excite inquiry and desire, and then be quenched 
in the blackened depths of eternal oblivion. 

If the well-defined faculty of the brute points 
unmistakably to its destiny, what less can be 
conjectured from the nature of the human soul? 
If the bee, filling its hive with the nectar of 
plants, on which it subsists, sealing up the cells 
that contain its precious morsel, gives promise 
of endurance ; if the numerous water-sacks in 
the stomach of the camel promise supply when 
other creatures are exhausted in the desert ; if 
an opening between the auricles of the heart, 

which never closes, and which enables the rac- 
13 



194 Diamonds y Unpolished and Polished. 

coon and other animal tribes to live long pe- 
riods without breathy gives promise that the 
thriftless animal will survive the rigors of win- 
ter, and appear fresh and hale in the spring, 
may not the grasping, towering desires of the 
human soul, and its astonishing susceptibilities 
and progress, be reckoned as evidences of its 
immortality ? If not, we may well inquire with 
another, " Wherefore was light given to him 
that is in misery— to a man whose way is hid, 
and whom God hath hedged in ? " 

All man's progress in usefulness and in piety 
is regarded by himself as humble beginnings, 
and in no sense commensurate with his desires. 
That remarkable philanthropist, John Howard, 
traveled, before the days of rapid transit, more 
than fifty thousand miles, and expended thirty 
thousand pounds sterling in behalf of the suf- 
fering. In 1780 Edmund Burke paid this elo- t 
quent tribute to his services : " He has visited 
all Europe — not to survey the sumptuousness 
of palaces or the stateliness of temples ; not to 
make accurate measurement of the remains of 
ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the 
curiosity of modern art ; not to collate medals 
or collect manuscripts ; but to dive into the 



Value of the Diamond. 195 

depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infec- 
tions of hospitals ; to survey the mansions of 
sorrow and pain ; to take the gauge and dimen- 
sions of misery, depression, and contempt ; to 
remember the forgotten ; to attend to the neg- 
lected ; to visit the forsaken ; and to compare 
and collate the distresses of all men in all 
countries," He died, at the age of sixty-four, in 
the midst of a foreign tour in behalf of prison- 
ers, counting his benevolent undertakings but 
half completed. 

George Whitefield crossed the Atlantic thir- 
teen times, preached eighteen thousand ser- 
mons, or an average of ten per week during a 
ministry of thirty-four years ; but his abundant 
labors fell vastly behind his ambitions. His 
last sermon, delivered in the open air to an 
immense audience, called forth all the loftiest 
energies of his being, and was continued for 
two hours. That night he halted at Newbury- 
port, Mass. Faint and weary, with candle in 
hand, he started for bed ; but lo, the multitude, 
hungering for the word of life, throng the yard, 
and his benevolent nature responds in a touch- 
ing exhortation, continued until the candle goes 
out in its socket, after which his exhausted form 



196 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

finds the couch, where it lies down to die — cut 
off in the midst of his laborious and unfinished 
career. 

John Wesley in his eighty-eighth year, 
though he had already preached more than 
forty-two thousand times, flew over England 
like an angel of mercy with the everlasting 
Gospel to preach. That many thousands 
through his instrumentality had gained the 
immortal shores, and that scores of thousands 
were also on the way, did not in the least 
dampen his ardor for still greater usefulness. 

Thomas Coke, whose labors in spreading 
Christianity, and whose zeal in organizing mis- 
sions among the poor and benighted, have not 
been excelled since the days of Paul, after 
crossing the Atlantic at his own expense eight- 
een times, and exhausting a large fortune in 
projecting and supporting missions in the West 
Indies, in Africa, in Asia, in England, Wales, 
Ireland, and America, died in old age on the 
Indian Ocean at the head of a band of mission- 
aries whom he had fitted out, at the personal 
expense of thirty thousand dollars, to carry the 
Gospel to the East Indies. 

None of these successful and wonderful men 



Value of the Diamond. 197 

approximated the measure of their holy ambi- 
tions, and no good man ever has or ever can in 
the brief circuit of his worldly career. 

And what we have just seen to be true in 
regard to his usefulness is also true respecting 
his attainments in piety. However deep, long- 
continued, and blessed the experience of the 
soul in the things of God ; however comforting 
the inward assurances, bright the visions, mul- 
tiplied and complete the triumphs of the cleansed 
heart over evil ; in its loftiest devotions it still 
exclaims, " I shall be satisfied " only " when I 
awake with Thy likeness." 

We have not undertaken in this chapter to 
exhibit the exact value of this wondrous jewel ; 
that is a problem no finite mind can solve. As 
well attempt to number the sand, name the 
stars, or enumerate the cycles of eternity. 

Reader, among all the valuables of this won- 
drous world the human soul is pre-eminently 
the jewel of jewels, outweighing, outshining, 
outliving every other. We cannot contem- 
plate its numerous exquisite, diversified, and 
ever enlarging faculties ; its astonishing prog- 
ress in the present life, though beset with in- 
numerable difficulties ; its essential suscepti- 



198 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

bility to pleasure and woe ; its power of en- 
durance and of memory ; its probable imma- 
teriality and indestructibility ; its strength in 
research and discovery, skill in invention, and 
versatility in pursuits of usefulness ; its wealth 
of affection, sublimity of thought, and ardor in 
devotion ; the nature of its aspirations, the tow- 
ering sweep of its ambitions and hopes, and 
the stretch of its onward destination, without 
being overwhelmed with amazement, only ex- 
celled in the contemplation of its peerless Orig- 
inal. The proper keeping and culture of this' 
gem, holding constantly in view its value, its 
relationships, and its future, are matters of infi- 
nite moment. No paltry considerations of 
money, of empty fame, of ease, or of fleshly 
desire, should ever obscure a mind so richly 
endowed, or turn it from the loftiest pursuits 
of which it is capable. If the Rajah of Mattan 
considered the possession of his diamond the 
circumstance on which the fortunes of his fam- 
ily depended, in how much higher and more im- 
portant sense does the infinite welfare of every 
individual depend upon the proper keeping of 
that jewel with which the Creator has so be- 
nevolently endowed him ? 



Lost Diamonds. 199 




CHAPTER IX. 

LOST DIAMONDS. 

IAMONDS of great value have often 
disappeared for a time, to the great 
dismay of those to whose keeping 
they were intrusted, and to the financial 
ruin of those who had invested large for- 
tunes in their possession. The plunder- 
ings attendant upon war have made sad 
havoc in every age among the precious 
i gems, and nearly all the most celebrated 
jewels have exchanged owners during 
such periods. The Orloff diamond, which 
has been set in the scepter of the Czar of Rus- 
sia, is believed to have been used many years 
ago as one of the eyes of an idol in a Brahmin 
temple. It was stolen by a French priest who 
had served at the shrine of a Brahmin god. 
After passing through the markets it was pur- 
chased by the Crown of Russia for four hundred 
and fifty thousand roubles, a pension of twenty 
thousand roubles, and a patent of nobility. 



200 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

The Florentine Brilliant was lost by the 
Duke of Burgundy at the battle of Granson. 
A Swiss soldier picked it up and sold it to a 
priest for one florin. After several transfers it 
fell into the hands of Pope Julius II, who gave 
it to the Austrian monarchy, where it is still 
retained. During the French Revolution a re- 
nowned blue diamond of great value disap- 
peared, and has never since been heard from. 
It was probably concealed by one who perished 
in battle, or was lost by the plunderer before 
reaching a place of safety. Still, as the natural 
diamond possesses no more thought or sense 
than any other particle of matter, as its uses 
are so limited, and its value so entirely facti- 
tious, its loss cannot be pronounced a matter 
of transcendent importance. 

But the loss of the soul, the real diamond, 
presents one of the most momentous consider- 
ations within the range of human thought. 
Man's perceptions are so deep and clear, his 
capacities so varied and wondrous, his duration 
so boundless, and his susceptibilities of disap- 
pointment and sorrow so acute and continued, 
that his ruin affords a spectacle of deepest 
sadness and commiseration. The carbonic 




Laborers at Work in Colesperg Kopje, South Africa. 



Lost Diamonds. 201 

diamond has attracted great and continued 
attention. Numerous volumes describing its 
nature, history, and uses have at different pe- 
riods been issued from the press. But the 
soul-diamond has, in every age, been the sub- 
ject above all others to rack the minds of the 
thoughtful. Its origin, its nature, its relation- 
ships, its duties, dangers, and destiny, have 
been ever-recurring problems to fill the in- 
quirer with absorbing and incessant solicitude. 
Man has been the problem of problems. And 
this is not unreasonable if, as one has said, 
" Each higher species in the scale of organized 
being involves in itself the perfections of all 
orders below it." Standing at the very apex 
of creation, man inherits in natural organism 
the perfections of universal nature around him, 
while in mental and moral endowments he is 
allied to the higher worlds of thought and 
power, and ultimately to the great Creator. 
His nature affords a manifest clue to his origin 
and destiny, independent of all other revela- 
tions. A being of such complete and compli- 
cated formation could not be of chance ; and 
the number, variety, brilliancy, and strength of 
his faculties disclose his lofty destination. 



202 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

But one sad fact has darkened all time. Man 
is in ruin. And the evil which he has incurred 
and bears has been in some form communi- 
cated to the world in which he dwells, and to 
every tribe of creatures that inhabit this terres- 
trial sphere. While it is true that ingenuity 
and design mark the formation of all things 
down to the smallest animalcules or infusoria, 
it is also true that disorders deep and wide- 
spread have from time immemorial shocked 
the globe. While goodness and mercy beam 
forth every-where to gladden the face of nature, 
severity and judgment are by no means con- 
cealed. There is clearly an immense falling 
short of the highest perfection in all the depart- 
ments of the world. Material nature, even, 
does not answer to her highest capabilities. 
The surface of the earth is to a great extent 
cursed with malaria and sterility, locked in 
frosts, or scorched with excessive heats, and is 
also rent with frightful chasms, and ridged with 
rocky and impassable mountains. Internal 
commotions with frightful upheavals, rocking 
sea and continent, deluge her plains and har- 
bors. The rush of her inundations ; the awful 
bellow of her volcanoes, vomiting devastating 



Lost Diamonds. 203 

rivers of blazing lava ; the appalling sweep of 
her tornadoes, plowing madly through sea and 
land ; the blaze and thunder of her aerial ele- 
ments, proclaim unmistakably that material 
nature, though still robed in beauty and grand- 
eur, is perverted and engulfed in a partial ruin. 
In all this the principal sufferer is man. 
Born in weakness and sorrow, he is shrouded 
in uncertainty, hemmed in by circumstance, 
startled by ever-present dangers, preyed upon 
by disease, until his precarious existence ter- 
minates and he passes to a world unknown. 
Man is the completest ruin in the world. Not- 
withstanding the grandeur of his formation, the 
rush of his insatiable desires, the crowning dig- 
nity of his station, and the lofty sweep of his 
faculties, he is sadly collapsed, and only exhib- 
its in these fitful flashes of genius and strength 
what he would and should be but is not. 
How completely he fails to answer the lofty 
purposes of his being ! Who supposes the 
sensitive fibers and nerves of his ingenious 
mechanism were formed chiefly for pain, or 
that his polished frame was invented to draw 
the ponderous cart or become food for the wild 
beast ? Were the faculties of his mind adjusted 



204 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

for internal conflicts, distraction, and fear ? 
Was his heart designed to be the grand hot- 
bed of all moral mischief? Are the possession 
of acres or of minerals, the donning of gaudy 
plumage, or the strains of ephemeral adulation, 
the loftiest objects of his proper ambition ? 
Nay, verily ; this cannot be affirmed without 
violence to one's own understanding. The 
truth is, man has suffered a collapse which has 
so inverted his high-wrought faculties as to 
render him his own worst enemy. His heart 
produces bitterness instead of love, his mind 
imbibes error instead of truth, his eye gathers 
darkness instead of light, his tongue utters 
falsehood instead of fact, his efforts result in 
sorrow instead of joy. Providences, circum- 
stances, and toils ultimate in disadvantage, be- 
cause of his native incapacity to turn them to 
their best account. 

This moral ruin in the race is not only 
world-wide and universal, but has been frank- 
ly acknowledged by the wise of all ages and 
countries. The learned heathen of antiquity 
recognized the fact, and groaned under it as 
much as the Jews or the Christians. The 
Hindoo mother casting her child into the jaws 



Lost Diamonds. 205 

of a crocodile on the bank of the Ganges ; the 
East Indiaman suspended on hooks in mid-air 
in violent self-torture ; and the wretched victim 
voluntarily crushed under the ponderous wheels 
of Juggernaut, confess thereby their ruin, and 
seek through these painful experiments a rem- 
edy they have long desired. 

But how great the dignity of man's nature in 
the midst of all his perversions ! Lapsed in mor- 
als, he still sees and at once hates and longs 
after the good. Crippled and obscured in mind, 
he would still be wise, though his powers chafe 
with inward and unnatural friction. Sunken 
in deepest poverty, he would still be rich, though 
his accumulations are of the most grotesque 
character. His being is a blaze kindled from 
the original fires of the universe, and however 
low it burns, still exhibits in its faintest flick- 
erings some luster of its great Original. 

The perversions of exaited genius, every- 
where witnessed, present one of the saddest 
evidences that men are already lost in moral 
corruption, and refuse to recognize their higher 
possibilities. These perversions mark alike the 
career of the artisan, the statesman,' the orator, 
and the student. How pride, avarice, and thirst 



206 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

of power have taxed the abilities of statesmen 
and monopolized the skill of the artisan in the 
invention of instruments of cruelty ! Sunken 
beneath his true level in the scale of existence, 
man madly batters his head against all sur- 
roundings. Having lost the corn, he quarrels 
over the husk. Counting matter and brutes 
beneath him, he seeks an unnatural and unhal- 
lowed supremacy over his fellows. Strangely 
forgetting all ties of relationship, community 
of present interest, and of ultimate destiny, he 
wages violently exterminating war against his 
own kind, brutalizes millions, wastes the re- 
sources of continents, and invokes the torturing 
power of all the elements upon his antagonist, 
filling the air with groans, and drenching the 
soil with human gore. Under the weight of his 
ruthless hand stately forests have been changed 
into arid deserts, the devastating waters of deep 
rivers spread over alluvial plains ; while cities 
and towns, the toil and pride of generations, 
have been swept with the besom of destruction. 
The loftiest developments of literary applica- 
tion and genius have also too often been marred 
with great moral delinquencies. Indeed, per- 
sons of most abandoned principles, the complet- 



Lost Diamonds. 207 

est wrecks in the entire shoals of humanity, 
have by their indomitable persistence towered 
in the sphere of letters, and shone like fallen 
but dazzling Lucifers. 

Voltaire, guilty of great laxity in morals, was 
still the acknowledged " author-king " of his 
century, and with a power of wit and sarcasm 
never equaled could ridicule the deepest solem- 
nities of time and eternity ; like a rocket, blaz- 
ing and dazzling all to the last, though its very 
brilliancy involved its ruin. 

Lord Byron was a most transcendent poetic 
genius, a brilliant diamond of the rarest cut. 
Robert Pollok pays the following graphic trib- 
ute to his exalted talent, describes his genius 
and his melancholy end : 

" Others, though great, 
Beneath their argument seemed struggling, whiles 
He, from above descending, stooped to touch 
The loftiest thought ; and proudly stooped, as though 
It scarce deserved his verse. 
He laid his hand 'upon the Ocean's mane,' 
And played familiar with his hoary locks ; 
Stood on the Alps, stood on the Apennines, 
And with the thunder talked, as friend to friend, 
And wove his garland of the lightning's wing. 
Great man ! the nations gazed, and wondered much, 
And praised I and many called his evil good. 
Wits wrote in favor of his wickedness, 
And kings to do him honor took delight. 



208 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

Thus, full of titles, flattery, honor, fame, 

Beyond desire, beyond ambition full, 

He died ! He died of what ? Of wretchedness ;. 

Drank every cup of joy, heard every trump 

Of fame, drank early, deeply drank, drank draughts 

That common millions might have quenched ; 

Then died of thirst, because there was no more to drink." 

The celebrated poem " Beautiful Snow," 
which has been universally admired on two 
continents, and which the " London Spectator " 
pronounced "the finest American poem ever 
written," but concerning the authorship of 
which there have been many theories, sets 
forth in most touching utterances the plunge 
of a beautiful and gifted woman into crime and 
woe. If written by herself, as some have af- 
firmed and others denied, it may be regarded 
as the last wail of a self-ruined soul still tower- 
ing in lofty genius, though overwhelmed in the 
vortex of moral ruin.* We select two stanzas : 

" Once I was fair as the beautiful snow, 
With an eye like its crystal, a heart like its glow ; 
Once I was loved for my innocent grace, 
Mattered and sought for the charms of my face. 
Father, 

Mother, 

Sisters, all, 
God and myself, I have lost by my fall ; 

* The authorship of this is now claimed by J. W. Watson, 



Lost Diamonds. 209 

And the veriest wretch that goes shivering by 
Will make a wide swoop lest I wander too nigh ; 
For of all that is on or abont me, I know 
There's nothing that's pure but the beautiful snow. 

" Once I was pure as the snow — but I fell 1 
Fell, like the snow-flake, from heaven to hell; 
Fell to be trampled as filth in the street ; 
Fell to be scoffed, to be spit on, and beat; 
Pleading, 

Cursing, 

Dreading to die, 
Selling my soul to whoever will buy; 
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread, 
Hating the living and cursing the dead: 
Merciful G-od ! have I fallen so low ? 
And yet I was once like the beautiful snow. 1 ' 

English history presents the example of Eu- 
gene Aram, born in Yorkshire in 1704, and 
executed in 1759. This man, rising from ex- 
tremest poverty at a period when schools and 
books were not easy of access, by dint of per- 
sonal energy attained to deep and extensive 
scholarship. Maintaining his household by daily 
toil, he still so redeemed time as to secure con- 
siderable attainments in natural science, and 
reader himself familiar with at least nine lan- 
guages. At the age of fifty-five, while compil- 
ing a comparative lexicon of the English, Latin, 
Greek, Hebrew, and Celtic languages, he was ar- 
rested on the discovery of the skeleton of a victim 
14 



210 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

he had plundered and murdered fourteen years 
previously. Rejecting all legal counsel, he 
conducted his own brilliant but unsuccessful 
defense in a cool, scholarly, and ingenious plea 
worthy of the head and heart of a fallen angel. 

No less striking was the career of the late 
Edward H. Ruloff, of our own country, exe- 
cuted at Bingham ton ' May 18, 1871. One 
can scarcely tell whether he is more appalled 
with the magnitude and enormity of his crimes, 
or astonished with the powers of his grasping 
intellect. With no unusual facilities for cult- 
ure, if reports may be credited, he made him- 
self almost an adept in chemistry, philosophy, 
mineralogy, anatomy, zoology, criminal law, and 
mechanics ; and besides mastering the English, 
the Latin, the Greek, the Hebrew, the French, 
and the German languages, he is said to have 
been tolerably familiar with several others. To 
secure means to pursue his studies and to grat- 
ify other desires, he scrupled in the use of no 
expedients, and appears to have for many years 
divided his time between the most painful lit- 
erary application and expeditions of plunder 
and crime. This villainous intellectual anom- 
aly, confined in a damp cell, with gallows and 



Lost Diamonds. 211 

grave but a step in advance, by the faint rays 
of a flickering taper pursued his studies in 
philology to the last, as if no other thought 
could enter his mind. 

We cannot contemplate the career of these 
dazzling intellects without feeling chagrined 
that human nature, so richly endowed, should 
sink so low. By neglecting the methods di- 
vinely provided for their moral recovery they 
tarnished their opulent natures, and so eclipsed 
the rising splendors of their being that, .with 
all their abilities and culture, they sunk in 
darkness and sorrow, unpolished and self-ruined 
diamonds. 

Reader, you may treat with disdain the con- 
nection between Calvary and the moral trans- 
formation of the human mind, you may count 
yourself quite above the weaknesses of religion, 
or consider yourself sufficiently brave to endure 
whatever of ill % eternity may unfold ; yet all 
your cavils cannot dissolve or lessen your obli- 
gations to your Maker and yourself. You are 
solemnly treading the slippery glacier which is 
every-where skirted with frightful chasms. 
Others as gifted and brave as you have died 
in confusion and woe. Can you be indifferent 



2 1 2 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

to the dangers of stranding your noble bark on 
the blackened reefs of sin, that every-where 
crop out through the billows of time ? All 
human experience proves that the Infinite 
Ruler has connected happiness with moral ex- 
cellence. There is no loss, no disgrace, and 
there can be no danger, in intelligent devotion 
to the law and the service of the true God. 
Learning, honors, riches, and happiness have 
crowned the pious in every age. The eternal 
destiny of your soul is a matter more transcend- 
ently important than any finite thought can 
conceive or numbers estimate. The culture 
and keeping of this priceless jewel have been 
committed to you, and upon you has been laid 
a fearful responsibility, from which you can 
never be relieved. If after a brief career you 
plunge from this gay world into a dungeon 
of gloom, and find yourself hopelessly lost, and 
far below all schemes of elevation and joy, how 
dreadful will be your consternation ! You may 
pretend indifference to your moral condition 
now, but the final loss of the soul will be a 
calamity to which you cannot remain insen- 
sible. 

The human soul is astonishingly sensitive. 



Lost Diamonds. • 213 

It cannot remain indifferent to its condition ; 
it cannot be satisfied without progress ; it can- 
not be indifferent to the opinions of others. 
The mere thoughts of others, we might sup- 
pose, would be man's smallest concern, and yet 
we do know that in a thousand instances they 
have rankled in his bosom and poisoned the 
streams of his life. Some have sickened and 
died under a sense of ill-founded suspicion, and 
others have died in despair on the discovery of 
their sins. While writing this chapter we are 
furnished with a striking example. Judge 
M'Cunn, of the Superior Court of New York, 
in excellent health, was, for malfeasance in 
office, deposed by the State Senate on July 2, 
and on the 6th he suddenly expired, exclaim- 
ing, " They have broken my heart ! " He 
could not be indifferent to public opinion. 

Some of the most gifted geniuses have so 
smarted under the criticisms of their contem- 
poraries that they have crept away from society 
and died in the solitude of their embittered 
mortification. Copernicus so dreaded popular 
condemnation that after preparing a treatise on 
the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies, he con- 
cealed the manuscript thirty years. Linnaeus, 



214 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

the great Swedish naturalist, nearly perished of 
mortification under the mockery attending the 
publication of his work on botany. The illus- 
trious Isaac Newton so dreaded the merciless 
criticisms of his generation that he refused to 
publish his favorite work on Chronology, though 
he had re-written it fifteen times. Des Cartes 
forsook France, his native land, and died in 
Stockholm ; and the philosophic Hume, who 
boasted of his equanimity, we are told by an 
English author was so deeply mortified with 
his apparent literary failures that he at one 
time contemplated changing his country and 
his name. The elder Robert Bruce, unable to 
brook the lack of appreciation to which his 
patriotic exertions were doomed, died of disap- 
pointed ambition. The death of Bishop Stil- 
lingfieet is said to have been hastened by 
Locke's confutation of his metaphysics. The 
poet Racine declared that the least adverse 
criticism, miserable as it might be, occasioned 
him more vexation than all the praise he re- 
ceived could give him pleasure. Now if man 
cannot bear the censures of nis fellow, how 
shall he endure the withering frowns of his 
Maker and his Judge ? If so deeply pained 



Lost Diamonds. 215 

with the breath of the finite, how shall he bear 
up under the sweeping blasts of the Infinite ? 
If disgrace before sinful man is so crushing, 
what must it be before the great God and his 
holy angels ? If the failure of a literary per- 
formance is a perpetual mortification, what will 
be the failure of a lifetime — a moral probation 
— an undying existence ? And if man never 
forgets or pardons his own sins, which result in 
his shame and sorrow, how terrible must be the 
self-torture of the lost spirit. 

The greatness of man's nature and the depth 
of his eternal perils are also evinced by his 
wonderful power of endurance under the most 
acute sufferings. The ability to suffer is prob- 
ably graduated by the tone and development of 
mind. While it is true that suffering exists 
among the lowest orders of sentient existence, 
it is also true that this capacity increases with 
every successive step as we rise in the scale of 
intellectual being. 

Man's capacity for mental pleasure and pain, 
independent of physical conditions, lifts him 
immeasurably above the other tribes of crea- 
tion. They are disturbed by physical contact 
only, % but his anxieties extend beyond the anti- 



216 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

podes. With perfect physical health and elastic 
spirits, he is shocked with intelligence from afar 
which turns him gray in a night, plunges him 
into convulsions, or produces instant death. 
This may be occasioned by joy, by grief, or by 
fear. 

His power of mental endurance transcends 
all our conceptions. The elephant, the master 
of the plain, captured in full growth, and unable 
to brook his humiliating captivity, has been 
known to lie tamely down and die. Not so 
with man. He survives the wreck of fortune, 
the most touching dissolution of earthly ties ; 
the loss of country, fame, and of personal 
honor ; he lingers in dungeons, and otherwise 
drinks the cup of grief, and then escapes to 
rain fury upon his enemies. Intense and long- 
continued suffering may cause the will to blench 
and the whole soul to writhe, yet no power of 
the mind exhibits signs of decay. Mind may 
be locked in profoundest solitude for years, and 
then awake with all the vigor and freshness of 
youth. Man's mental powers are neither lost 
by inactivity nor exhausted by suffering. The 
maniac loaded with chains may shiver amid the 
damps of a gloomy dungeon for many years, 



Lost Diamonds. 217 

until his voice is like the creaking of an iron 
door, but he is still a man. Irrational, it is true, 
but not one faculty is lost. His eyes still flash 
with intellectual fire, and his whole soul bristles 
with life. Examples of the greatest suffering 
must be sought among minds most rarely gifted 
and extensively cultivated. As the elephant 
can probably suffer beyond the lobster, so the 
high-toned and cultivated philosopher has not 
only a more delicately-wrought and sensitive 
physical organism, but is capable also of more 
exquisite mental pleasure and agony than the 
savage. Examples of excruciating physical suf- 
ferings among persons of rarest gifts and culture 
have not been wanting. Without the loss of 
mental vigor or fortitude, they have lingered 
years with leprosy, tumors, and devouring can- 
cers, until the exhausted body has literary fallen 
to pieces. 

But the sorrows of the soul are infinitely 
more distressing. These are the result of the 
deliberate abandonment of principle and the 
perversion of energies and opportunities for 
virtue and usefulness. A full sense of these 
appalling consequences seldom takes possession 
of the soul until near the close of life. Then 



2 1 8 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

profligate and ruined man awakes to his peril- 
ous condition, to groan and writhe beneath a 
burden quite intolerable, but from which there 
is no relief. Then, stretched on a pallet of suf- 
fering, with sickness and sin, the two great ene- 
mies of soul and body, blending their fury upon 
his sensitive and immortal nature, we catch an 
affecting and never-to-be-forgotten view of the 
greatness of this precious jewel even in its 
deepest ruin. What sweeps of memory ! what 
flashes of piercing thought ! what swellings of 
desire ! what appalling utterances ! what wither- 
ings regrets of the past ! what frightful horrors 
of the future ! what evidences of mortal agony, 
even after the limbs are paralyzed, the eye 
dimmed, and the hand utterly helpless ! As 
the expiring sea-monster rends the surface of 
the great deep, so the departing human soul is 
mighty even in death. How sensible men then 
become of the emptiness of honor, of the im- 
potency of human might, and the poverty of 
riches. Louis XL of France lived long in 
utter horror of death. His physician, acquaint- 
ed with his weakness, had only to mention the 
subject to obtain large sums of money to bribe 
him to most skillful medical watchfulness and 



Lost Diamonds. 219 

treatment. He is said to have taken fifty-five 
thousand crowns from him in this manner in 
five months. 

"Am I very sick?" said a profane man who 
for many years had " heaped up riches and 
wrath " like the dust, and wholly neglected the 
better possibilities of his being. 

" You are quite sick, sir," said the physician, 
"and should prepare for the worst." 

" Shall I never recover ? " he continued, 
straining his eyes as if to read his fate in the 
countenance of his medical adviser, " cannot I 
live a week ? " 

On being informed that he would probably 
continue but a little longer in the world, he 
replied, 

" Say not so ; I will give you a hundred 
thousand dollars if you will prolong my life 
three days." 

A few minutes after this he expired. 

Philip III. of Spain was counted a very moral 
prince, but when his feet were chilled in the 
cold river of death, and he thought of the 
searching ordeal he was soon to undergo before 
the face of the Eternal, he exclaimed, " O 
would to God I had never reigned ! O that 



220 Diamonds ; . Unpolished and Polished. 

those years I have spent in my kingdom I had 
lived a solitary life in the wilderness ! O that 
I had lived a life alone with God ! How much 
more secure should I now have died ! What 
doth all my glory profit, but that I have so 
much the more torment in my death ! " 

As the damps of death gather upon the brow 
all previous fears and mental agonies are im- 
mensely augmented. Thomas Hobbes, the 
learned materialist, utterly recreant to all moral 
obligations, and denying the real existence of 
mind, was still tortured for years with distress- 
ing inward fear. His guilty conscience and 
terrified imagination converted every shadow 
into a black-handed demon. But his fears 
did not waste with his body. Long unable 
to sleep or live in the dark, he took his final 
plunge into the regions of the unknown, shriek- 
ing as he went, " More light, more light ! " 
Beyond the reach of earthly tapers, his soul 
was quaking with remorseful fear when the 
sensations of the body upon which he had 
predicated intelligence had utterly vanished. 

John Randolph, of Roanoke, one of our most 
gifted American statesmen, and who at one 
period of life had experienced an unspeakable 



Lost Diamonds. 221 

joy in discharge of his moral obligations, dis- 
closed in his dying hour the torture of his soul 
in that thrice repeated but never adequately 
explained word, " Remorse ! Remorse ! Re- 
morse ! " Who can compute the loss of such 
a jewel ? 

The gifted Edward Young in his inimitable 
style has described the dying scene of the ac- 
complished Altamont, supposed to have been 
a young English nobleman of high birth and 
fortune, but whose moral delinquencies and 
dissipation had destroyed the happiness of his 
wife, wasted the inheritance of his only son, 
and brought himself prematurely to the grave. 
Bewailing his follies, and sunken in frightful 
depths of despair, he made this touching utter- 
ance : " This body is all weakness and pain ; 
but my soul, as if stung up by torment to 
greater strength and spirit, is full powerful to 
reason, full mighty to suffer. And that which 
thus triumphs within the jaws of mortality is 
doubtless immortal. And as for a Deity," he 
adds; "nothing less than an Almighty could 
inflict what I feel. My soul, as my body, lies 
in ruins — in scattered fragments of broken 
thought. Remorse for the past throws my 



222 Diamonds ; Unpolished and Polished. 

mind on the future ; worse dread of the future 
throws it back on the past. I turn, and turn, 
and find no ray. Didst thou feel half the 
mountain that is on me thou wouldst struggle 
with the martyr for his stake, and thank God 
for the flame." 

These examples open to our contemplation a 
phase in human existence appalling beyond all 
our ordinary conceptions. Life's golden oppor- 
tunities and joys having vanished, a tide of evil 
pours its desolating torrent upon the mind, 
while a fathomless depth of woe is revealed in 
the human soul. Clinging to the outmost 
verge of time, amid the ruins of material na- 
ture, these gems of intellect betray no loss of 
power, but bewail in terms too expressive and 
touching for imitation the sad ruin of their 
moral nature. And who, in imagination only, 
can peer into the yawning chasm where lie be- 
yond all hope the blasted wrecks of high-born 
sons, and know the despair of deathless souls 
which were designed for the spheres of unsul- 
lied existence ; and though now hopelessly 
sunken and forever lost, are still "powerful to 
reason and mighty to suffer," without being 
overwhelmed with the* immensity of the ruin ? 



How to Preserve Jezvels. 223 




CHAPTER X. 

HOW TO PRESERVE JEWELS. 

HE safety of articles of value, of 

invested rights, of privileges and 

liberties, is usually supposed to be 

guarded according to the magnitude of 

the interests involved. Things of trifling 

f worth are provided with few safeguards, 
while others are considered of such tran- 
scendent value as to justify the employ- 
ment of all lawful inventions for their 
security. The prerogatives, territory, and 
honor of the nations of Europe are con- 
sidered matters of such great importance as 
to demand the perpetual drilling of hundreds 
of thousands of troops who shall be constantly 
ready to fight for their security. 

In the eastern portion of London stand a 
group of ancient structures known as the Tower. 
Here in other days dwelt the royal family, with 
their chapel for worship, and their prison for po- 
litical offenders. The locality is a world of itself, 



224 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

with a history stretching far back into the ages, 
whose chapters exhibit the varied records of 
inconstancy and ingratitude, the skulkings of 
cowardice, the pomp of ambition, the savage 
triumph of brute force, the miseries of fallen 
greatness and of blighted fame. In our day 
these structures have become the receptacles 
of curious armor, and of a variety of relics col- 
lected from all sources, which are so grouped 
as to illustrate nearly every age of English his- 
tory. One section is known as the jewel- 
house/ and contains the regalia, the coronation 
plate, and the principal scepters, crowns, and 
jewels of the monarch. These are matters 
of great curiosity to visitors, and their value 
is considered so immense that the greatest 
precautions are taken to perfect their secur- 
ity. The building itself is made as strong 
as possible to resist the arts of the treach- 
erous and the force of the elements. The 
curiosities are placed in strong iron cases so 
closely barred that no hand can enter them, 
while the rooms and all their approaches are 
guarded night and day by an ample force of 
trusty armed men. In one of these strong- 
iron cages, on a cushion of the richest velvet, 



How to Preserve yew els. 225 

lies the Koh-i-noor, glittering with beauty and 
fire. 

We have all heard of the vaults recently con- 
structed in New York for the safe keeping of 
valuables. Down deep in the earth, beneath im- 
mense structures, floors and ceilings are formed 
of vast granite blocks bolted together through 
their centers with large bars of wrought iron ; 
steel vaults with twenty-five courses of steel and 
iron welded and bolted together for walls and 
ceilings, and floors of immense steel plates ; iron 
chests, grated windows, gates of solid bronze ; 
iron doors with combination locks, guarded day 
and night by policemen and private watchmen. 
Here are deposited sheets and slips of paper 
stating that A. has purchased a plot of ground, 
that B. has so many shares of rail road stock ; 
a stack of papers show that the Government 
owes D. half a million. Here are also rings 
and jewels, and rich plate and curiosities, 
deposited by those who are living abroad. 
How careful people are getting ! The money 
is nearly all held and handled by the banks. 
We are afraid to have it in our houses or 
our pockets. We buy and sell, and accom- 
plish immense transactions, with checks, and 

15 



226 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

a variety of paper pledges, without handling a 
copper. 

But while so much commendable forethought 
and money are expended for the security of our 
stocks and ornaments, there is too frequently 
a culpable indifference, even recklessness, in 
relation to the keeping of jewels infinitely more 
valuable. How many pay large sums annually 
to secure their property from losses by the ele- 
ments and the robber, yet allow their souls and 
the souls of their children to be daily imperiled ! 
Care and toil for security should be intensified 
according to the value of the object to be kept. 
For man to allow his soul or the souls of his 
offspring to be drugged with false doctrines, 
fretted by strange passions, inflated with vanity, 
or wasted with vices, is the most culpable and 
suicidal policy of which the mind is capable. 

It is by no means the end of duty to provide 
for temporal comfort, or to dissipate the crudi- 
ties of the intellect. It is a thousand times 
less criminal to endanger the title to an estate 
than the fitness for immortality. The soiling 
of a garment, or the wasting of an estate, may 
be atoned for or endured ; but a poisoning 
of principles, which culminates in the abuse of 






How to Preserve Jewels. 227 

talent, the waste of opportunities and of time, 
and the losses that belong to eternity, is a 
matter truly appalling. The soul of every hu- 
man being is born to the greatest conceivable 
perils. Before that infant mind lie the inde- 
scribable depths of untried liberty and of chang- 
ing principles. It must feel its way into the 
region of responsible selections, states of mind, 
associations and habits, that shall fashion and 
fill its eternity. The demands of its soul are 
immensely more pressing than those of the 
body. Food, raiment, shelter, the temporary 
ownership of mines, ships, or of acres, are but 
the trifling accidents of its existence, while on 
its moral purity depends its endless felicity. 
.Let no one conclude, then, that because he has 
amassed a fortune for his child, or assisted his 
brother to prosperous' business, that he has 
thereby filled the measure of his obligation, 
while their souls remain untouched by the sanc- 
tifying efficacy of religious truth. Kindness to 
the body and solicitude for the present are the 
merest mockeries of affection where the true 
culture of the soul and its eternity are forgotten. 
But how are we to rescue and preserve these 
jewels ? In the mind of the writer it is entirely 



228 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

clear that parents have vastly more to do with 
the keeping of their domestic jewels, and that 
their influence in the matter begins at a much 
earlier period than is usually supposed. Chil- 
dren unquestionably inherit many of the dis- 
eases, physical traits, and natural qualities of 
their parents, and where their ancestors have 
for successive generations pursued any given 
career, they derive from them a natural impulse 
in that direction, whether to good or evil, not 
easily changed. Habit long continued modifies 
the brain, and changes essentially the character, 
conduct, and destiny of a soul and of a family. 
If any doubt, let them study the history of 
families noted through three generations for 
their miserly pursuits, their licentiousness, dis- 
sipation, indolence, or pauperism. The same 
principle is manifested • in the favorable devel- 
opments witnessed in families long noted for 
their brilliant intellectuality or integrity, their 
industry or piety. . 

The groveling tendencies of the savage are 
inveterate, and will crop out for several gener- 
ations after his enlightenment. The children 
of a king whose ancestors have long enjoyed 
the splendors of royalty have the thirst of gov- 



How to Preserve yew els. 229 

ernment so deeply inwrought that they can 
scarcely sober their minds to any lower sphere. 
The children of life-long paupers and crim- 
inals as naturally tend to the pursuits of their 
fathers as do those of the watch-makers of 
Geneva, or of the diamond-cutters of Amster- 
dam. Where the molding example and will of 
the parent are added to these inherited tend- 
encies, the child as naturally yields to the in- 
fluence as does the clay to the molding hand 
of the potter. Dr. Bushnell has admirably pre- 
sented this point in his lecture on " Organic 
Unity in the Family." 

He says, " The child being under the law 
of the parents, they will keep him at work to 
execute their plans, or their sins, as the case 
may be ; and as they will seldom think of what 
they do or require, so he will seldom have any 
scruples concerning it The property gained 
belongs to the family. They have a common 
interest, and every prejudice or animosity felt 
by the parents, the children are sure to feel 
even more intensely. They are all locked to- 
gether in one cause — in common cares, hopes, 
offices, and duties for their honor and dishonor, 
their sustenance, their ambition ; all their ob- 



230 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

jects are common. So they are trained of 
necessity to a kind of general working, or co- 
operation, and, like stones rolled together in 
some brook or eddy, they wear each other into 
common shapes. If the family subsist by plun- 
der, then the infant is swaddled as a thief, the 
child wears a thief's garments, and feeds the 
growth of his body on stolen meat ; and, in due 
time, he will have "the trade upon him without 
knowing that he has taken it up or when he 
took it. If the father is intemperate, the chil- 
dren must go on errands to procure his sup- 
plies, lose the shame that might be their safety, 
be immersed in the fumes of liquor in going 
and coming, and why not rewarded by an oc- 
casional taste of what is so essential to the 
enjoyment of life? If the family subsist in 
idleness and beggary, then the children will be 
trained to lie skillfully, and maintain their false 
pretenses with a plausible effrontery ; all this 
you will observe not as a sin but as a trade. 
Whatever fire the fathers kindle, the children 
are always found gathering the wood. If the 
father reads a sporting gazette on Sunday, the 
family must help him find it. If he writes let- 
ters of business on Sunday, the children must 



How to Preserve yew els. 231 

carry them to the post-office. If the mother is 
a scandal-monger, she will make her children 
spies and eaves-droppers. If she directs her 
servant to say, at the door, that she is not at 
home, she will sometimes be overheard by her 
child. 

" If she is ambitious that her children should 
excel in the display of finery and fashion, they 
must wear the show and grow up in the spirit 
of it. If her house is a den of disorder and 
filth, they must be at home in it. Fretfulness 
and ill-temper in the parents are provocations, 
and therefore somewhat more than command- 
ments to the same. The proper result will be 
a congenial assemblage in the house of petu- 
lance and ill-nature. The niggardly parsimony 
that quarrels with a child when asking for a 
book needful for his proficiency at school is 
teaching him that money is worth more than 
knowledge. If the parents are late risers the 
children must not disturb the house, but stay 
quiet, and take a lesson that is not to assist 
their energy and promptness in the future busi- 
ness of life. If they go to church but half of 
the day, they will not send their children the 
other half. If they never read the Bible, they 



232 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

will never teach it. If they laugh at religion, 
they will put a face upon it which will make 
their children justify the contempt they ex- 
press. Without any design to that effect, all 
the actings of business, pleasure, and sin propa- 
gate themselves throughout the circle as the 
weights of a clock maintain the workings of the 
wheels. Where there is no effort to teach 
wrong, or thought of it, the house is yet a 
' school of wrong, and the life of the house is 
only a practical drill in evil." 

It is from the united force of these inherited 
tendencies and the all-swaying influence of 
home that heathenism perpetuates itself. So 
Mohammedan families rear only Mohammed- 
ans, cannibals only cannibals, and gypsies and 
paupers are continually perpetuating their own 
kind. Granting all that can be claimed for the 
power of individual choice, and of personal re- 
sponsibility after the development of reason and 
conscience, still all history and observation 
prove that the best men sprang from the best 
stock, and the vilest from the most vile, the 
successive editions on either side of the line 
usually excelling the preceding. 

And it is upon this law of inheritance and 



How to Preserve Jewels. 233 

this all-molding power of home culture that we 
base in part our hope of the better ages which 
are promised in Revelation. As the facilities 
and practices of intemperance, gambling, licen- 
tiousness, and other sinful indulgences pass 
away, and Christian principles and practices 
correspondingly deepen and multiply, the temp- 
tations to evil will be lessened, and the incen- 
tives to piety immensely augmented. Children 
reared by parents trained in life-long godliness, 
breathing the atmosphere of sanctity from birth 
to their launch into the realm of maturity, will 
tend more easily to thoughtfulness and purity. 
We do not believe that by any processes of 
education, or by any attainments in moral 
power on the part of parents, children will ever 
be born without innate sinful tendencies. The 
fact of inherited depravity is, and must through 
all time remain, universal, and we think children 
should not be so identified with the forms of 
religion as to be allowed to forget that they 
need the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. 
Nevertheless we fully believe that from the live- 
long sanctification of the parent stock better 
physical and intellectual tendencies will be in- 
herited, and with suitable home culture, and 



234 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

under the operations of the ever-present Spirit, 
the child will early come to a conscious expe- 
rience of a God-given victory over the evil, and 
a heavenly triumph of the good in his own soul. 
We are aware that the existence of any good 
qualities received through inheritance is rarely 
mentioned by orthodox ministers lest we should 
seem to ignore the doctrine of depravity ; but 
without ignoring it, may not something be said 
and done to multiply and strengthen tendencies 
that shall unite with the Spirit for the over- 
throw and removal of this depravity ? No one 
doubts but that human nature in nearly every 
instance is capable of still deeper perversions, 
both in body and mind, which powerfully 
strengthen its depravity. And can there be 
any absurdity in urging the converse of this 
undoubted proposition ? If the leper against 
his wishes bequeathes his infection to his child ; 
if the inebriate's offspring are cursed by his 
fatal weakness ; if the children of the miser, 
the voluptuary, the prize-fighter, and the slug- 
gard, are simply duplicate editions of their par- 
ents ; yea, if the blind, the lunatic, and the deaf 
mute sometimes involuntarily transmit their 
infirmities to their posterity, may not Christian 



How to Preserve yew els. 235 

parents do something for the moral elevation of 
their children by the correct and early cultiva- 
tion of their own natures ? If a line of ances- 
tors have been sane the child will not be likely 
to inherit insanity, If children spring from fam- 
ilies never addicted to dissipation they cannot 
inherit the appetite and disease of the drunk- 
ard, and are consequently free from that pecul- 
iar inward temptation, and are so much the 
more open to Christianity. The children of 
healthy and intellectual parents are more likely 
to be highly intellectual than those born of in- 
valids or the demented. 

Who has not seen examples of children of 
excellent parentage, who, before conversion, 
like the young Israelite, tried to outwardly 
keep the whole moral law, and when their faith 
finally accepted the atonement, and the orig- 
inal damage or virus of their moral nature 
was removed, seemed at once harmoniously 
formed throughout, and full-fledged for an ex- 
alted Christian career, with every faculty mar- 
shaled under the direction of divine grace ? 
Much of the completeness and conscientious- 
ness that characterize their after years sprang 
from their well-formed natures, which also re- 



236 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

suited from the triumph of grace in the hearts 
and lives of their parents. And who has not 
witnessed other examples where reason, con- 
science, and grace have asserted themselves 
and gained the supremacy, yet from an ill- 
formed and deeply perverted nature, mental or 
physical, there sprang up tendencies which 
compelled a life-long battle with the higher 
aspirations, and were a perpetual weakness and 
grief to the individual ? Many persons try to 
be good, and are, yet are they so clogged by 
inherited family peculiarities, which are so es- 
sentially a part of themselves that they never 
discover them, that they are more a burden in 
retarding Christianity than a power in advanc- 
ing it. Their parents were not careful in pre- 
serving jewels. If any of these later utterances 
find a melancholy response in the heart of the 
reader, whose conscience and reason are daily 
battling against perverted physical forces, let 
him find consolation in the assurance that his 
persevering faith will ultimate in personal tri- 
umph, and that his changed heart and corrected 
life will work a gradual improvement in his 
physical nature, and enable him to bequeath a 
higher type of humanity to posterity. 



How to Preserve Jewels. 237 

If any now affirm that our argument is nulli- 
fied by the character and conduct of the chil- 
dren of clergymen, we answer that any wide- 
spread reputed prodigality among their children 
is a baseless assumption. Clergymen usually 
have fair opportunities for the intellectual and 
moral training of their children, but smaller 
facilities for their proper manual discipline. 
More delinquencies by far occur among their 
sons from this last mentioned and almost un- 
avoidable defect than from all other sources 
combined. Farmers, manufacturers, merchants, 
bankers, lawyers, and physicians can train their 
sons to their own occupation under their own 
superintendency ; but the ministry is not a pro- 
fession to be chosen or to be bequeathed a 
child, but a calling so sacred that the man of 
God dare not "lay hands suddenly" even on 
his own son. The nature of a minister's studies 
and labors separate him above all other men 
from practical association with business, so that 
when his sons enter upon this eventful arena it 
is without the guiding presence of their natural 
adviser. But with all this disadvantage the 
sons of most clergymen succeed. A gentle- 
man among the Presbyterians, laudably anxious 



238 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

to ascertain whether there is any truth in the 
oft-repeated assertion that ministers and dea- 
cons children do not often walk in the footsteps 
of their fathers, took pains to collect accurate 
statistics upon the subject, and made the fol- 
lowing report : " In two hundred and forty-one 
families of ministers and deacons there were 
eleven hundred and sixty-four children over fif- 
teen years of age. Of these children eight 
hundred and fourteen — more than three fourths 
— were hopefully pious, seven hundred and 
thirty-two had united with the Church, fifty- 
seven had entered the ministry, or were en- 
gaged in preparatory studies, and only fourteen 
were dissipated, about one half of whom only 
became so while residing with their parents. In 
twenty-seven of these families there were one 
hundred and twenty-three children, all of whom 
but seven were pious, seven of them were dea- 
cons, and fifteen were ministers. In fifty-six of 
those families there were two hundred and 
forty-nine children over fifteen years of age, 
and all were pious." To fill the world with such 
families would produce a complete moral revo- 
lution. 

Dr. Sprague, in his "Annals of the Ameri- 



How to Preserve Jewels. 239 

can Pulpit," has added valuable testimony in 
the same direction. From the families of the 
one hundred ministers whose career he re- 
corded had been raised up one hundred and 
ten ministers, and the remainder of their sons 
had for the most part risen to eminence in the 
professions, or were distinguished as merchants 
or scholars. The family names of daughters 
are lost in their matrimonial connections, but 
the qualities of their parents usually distinguish 
their lives, and the fact that they are the daugh- 
ters of clergymen usually opens their way to 
the best society. Dr. Haven once said, "We 
will venture the opinion that three fourths of 
the great men of this nation are not over two 
degrees removed from clergymen's families, or 
from families strictly religious." 

This undeniable fact of transmitted tenden- 
cies should be a powerful motive to deep and 
consistent godliness with every thoughtful phi- 
lanthropist. We care little about empty theo- 
ries, and have presented these considerations 
chiefly for their practical value ; and we are 
more anxious that these truths be pondered by 
the young than the old. The youth of the 
present will be the parents of the future, and 



240 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

we would not have them ignorant of the fact 
that the good or evil of their natures and lives 
will be involuntarily communicated to others, 
that others may sigh and writhe under the 
evils they now encourage, or be prompted to- 
ward excellence by tendencies they are now 
struggling to establish. The "keeping of the 
heart with all diligence," and the ruling well of 
the human spirit, are matters of infinitely more 
than personal importance. 

But the proper keeping of these jewels in- 
volves also a wise and sanctified culture, begin- 
ning at birth and stretching indefinitely onward. 
The culture of a soul does not begin, as some 
suppose, when it enters the school-room, but 
when it first finds its place in its mother's 
arms. Vastly more is accomplished in the 
molding of disposition during the infantile 
period, when children are so often given over 
to the mercies of professional nurses, than is 
ordinarily supposed. We think an anxious 
mother may safely conclude that when her 
child knows enough to cry from the sting of a 
bee, the prick of a pin, the slamming of doors, 
the loud words and tumults occasioned by 
anger and strife, that it is sufficiently advanced 



How to Preserve Jewels. 241 

to feel the touch of tenderness and be improved 
by moral influences. From that period its 
genuine culture can only be neglected with the 
greatest peril. 

It is one of the most unaccountable things in 
the world that so many well-meaning Christian 
mothers can coolly deliver these precious jewels 
into the hands of ignorant and often vicious 
persons, to be by them retained and molded, if 
not neglected or poisoned, during this plastic 
period. Ladies who would not trust the nurse 
for an hour with a diamond valued at a hun- 
dred dollars will commit to her keeping for 
years the body and soul of a precious child, 
whose value exceeds the stars, and whose ruin 
is a matter we instinctively shudder to contem- 
plate. 

Several years since we were called to con- 
duct a funeral service in the upper part of the 
city of New York. During the service we ob- 
served a rosy-cheeked little girl in the room 
and thought there was something very unusual 
about her eyes. Before leaving the house a 
friend said, " Have you noticed this child ? she 
is perfectly blind." On inquiry we ascertained 

that when an infant she was given over to the 
16 



242 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

care of the nurse, and by undue exposure to 
strong light her little eyes became inflamed. 
The family physician prepared a wash for them, 
but the stupid creature in attempting to ad- 
minister it took the wrong vial, and poured 
vitriol into both eyes, extinguishing forever' 
the light of day. Mothers will shudder, and 
even weep, as they read this touching incident 
from real life ; but, alas ! what is at this time 
transpiring in their own nurseries ? Who are 
giving the early touches to those plastic but 
hardening jewels they claim to love so fondly ? 
What of their manners, their morals, their re- 
ligion ? It is idle and heartless to say, " There 
is no danger ; the child is too young to be in- 
jured if well fed and warmed." Assuredly the 
seed of the great hereafter, whether you will 
believe it or not, is being planted, and if a drop 
of vitriol can extinguish forever the light of 
day from a little eye not yet developed into 
strength ; if a discolored mote in the harden- 
ing crystal will mar its purity, and the rude 
handling of an egg result in a deformity, 
what endless damage may be done to a child 
ere one is aware of it ! Nothing but exact 
personal supervision can meet the measure 






How to Preserve jewels. 243 

of responsibility and of properly developed 
affection. 

We once heard an eloquent lady say, in ad- 
dressing an assemblage of children, that she 
" once had a beautiful little flower" in her family, 
" a sweet little girl," but that while she was ab- 
sent on a tour in Europe her " flower faded and 
flew away." We were strongly prompted to 
add, that if, instead of spending her money and 
time in sight-seeing, she had stayed to keep and 
cultivate her flower, it might not have faded 
and flown away so early. The great Creator 
has placed it within the power of the mother, 
above all others, to polish and preserve these 
jewels, and no earthly loss is half so sad to a 
child as that of a wise Christian mother. Where 
a child is despised or neglected by its mother, 
the worst consequences almost invariably fol- 
low. What a magnificent moral gem might 
not Lord Byron have been had his mother been 
as pious, sweet-tempered, and generous as she 
was gifted ! The bitterest thought of his brill- 
iant but vicious and sorrowful life was, that his 
mother, who should have soothed, subdued, and 
elevated him, called him a " lame brat," and 
never loved him. Seed sown in the fresh soil 



244 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

of childhood seldom fails of its root and its 
fruit. Nearly all the melancholy examples of 
human wretchedness and vice that darken the 
world may be traced to the ignorance or reck- 
lessness of parents. 

To save the jewels that glitter every- where 
around us, Christ Jesus must be enthroned in 
our hearts and in our homes. We must per- 
sonally seek for purity and moral power. The 
day of emptiness and of affectation in our re- 
ligion must end ; we must with our hearts 
believe what we teach, and really be what we 
wish to appear. It is not enough to desire the 
good of our children, our kindred, and neigh- 
bors. None will admit that they seek the ruin 
of their children or associates. But the case 
requires more than empty wishes, neutralized 
by indifference or a life of open sin. 

And there are too many defects in our per- 
sonal piety, and consequently in our example 
and government, for our largest success either 
at home or abroad. Outside glosses cannot 
long deceive, nor inside defects be concealed. 
Even our little children read and know us, as 
we scarcely understand ourselves. Our pre- 
cepts go no further than our example, and our 






How to Preserve Jewels. 245 

prayers no further than our faith. One may 
talk well, but neutralize all he says by covertly 
leaning in the opposite direction. There are 
vastly too many defects in some good families 
for the safe keeping of jewels. In one, other- 
wise well ordered, there is an undue thirst for 
wealth. Lucrative situations for their sons are 
sought and obtained without any nice regard 
or fear of the strain that shall be brought upon 
their principles. They are suddenly launched 
into the depths of a great city, surrounded with 
its multitudinous temptations and perils, as ii 
their principles were too firmly established to 
be affected. How logical for such youth to 
conclude that their parents consider wealth 
first, and other matters of importance after- 
ward. The vanities of style, caste, and ambi- 
tion, in too many circles professedly religious, 
neutralize every thing said about virtue and 
right, and greatly strengthen and build up de- 
pravity. Going away to school when facilities 
quite as good are at home, where under pa- 
rental oversight studies might have been pur- 
sued, has ruined not a few. Many professedly 
Christian families have no established religious 
habits. They have no prayer, no religious con- 



246 Diamonds, Unpolished and Polished. 

versation or study. Religion with them is a 
name, an affectation, a garment to be worn on 
Sundays, at funerals, and when the parson 
calls. Can the rill in such a family rise above 
the fountain ? In other families every thing 
pertaining to religion is rigid, solemn, formal, 
and cold. The doctrines may be sound, and 
the regulations faultless, but the utter absence 
of simplicity, sweetness, and joyfulness repels 
instead of attracting the heart. Censoriousness 
makes a desert of many otherwise fruitful 
hearts, parching the soil where it goes. This 
evil usually springs from pride of intellect and 
want of sympathy and charity. But parents 
cannot quarrel with the Bible or its institu- 
tions without sadly demoralizing themselves 
and their families. If the parents live on "sour 
grapes, the children's teeth will be set on edge." 
Some fathers collect their children and pray 
upward in the morning, but unfortunately live 
downward until the evening. The long day, 
of course, overbalances the short morning. 
Some talk religion only to their children in 
tones of severity, quoting Scripture with fearful 
applications to punish their delinquencies. It 
xs no wonder that boys go from the Sunday- 



How to Preserve Jewels. 247 

school to the House of Correction, and at last 
die in the Penitentiary, when we consider that 
the wisdom of those who trained them was so 
much like foolishness. Our defective natures 
mar our work at every corner and defeat our 
purposes, and then we sit down and lament 
that God " standeth afar off," and that his 
promises are not fulfilled to us. " Train up a 
child in the way it should go, and when it is old 
it will not depart from it," is the pledge of the 
Eternal, truthful and durable as his own peer- 
less nature ; and whatever discrepancy may 
seem to occur between the promise and the 
result can only arise from the defects in the 
training. Failure results only from lack of 
wisdom, of suitable tempers, and of effort. We 
fail because we have not sufficiently understood 
the nature of those jewels we have sought to 
polish ; we have been too lax or too rigid, too 
formal, too bigoted, too fanatical, or have not 
sufficiently attracted them by our love and 
habitual sweetness. We have not dwelled in 
God and filled our homes with the hallowed 
perfume of heaven, or our children, perhaps, 
would have been saved and ere this risen up 
to call us blessed. O when shall we study 



248 Diamonds, UnpolisJied a?id Polished. 

the art of polishing and preserving souls with 
the attention now bestowed on science, the 
fine arts, and the burnishing of the natural 
diamond ? 

Finally, the preservation of these jewels can 
only be secured by infusing into their natures 
the principles and purity of Jesus. Granting 
that this in its completeness can only follow 
the cravings and faith of their own responsible 
individuality, we still insist that those cravings 
must be incited and nurtured by witnessing 
the examples and feeling the touches of purity 
around them. Advanced minds yet straying 
and wasting in their moral discolorment, must 
be sought out and plied unceasingly with all 
the wise and sanctified influences and arts of 
purified affection. Let us remember that while 
God has indisputably established the realm of 
individual liberty and responsibility, he has 
also so linked influence to character and des- 
tiny as to render each man, to a great extent, 
his brother's keeper and benefactor, and that 
the anxieties and toils of a lifetime are but a 
trifling outlay for the securing of a jewel so 
transcendently valuable. Every other pursuit 
or consideration dwindles into insignificance 



How to Preserve Jewels. 249 

when compared with this manifest calling and 
obligation. Life's day is too brief, too perilous, 
and its possibilities too towering, to allow the 
thoughts to long dwell upon, or the affections to 
cling to, the vile or the ephemeral. Matters of 
magnitude and duration, infinitely outstretch- 
ing man's conceptions, crowd his eternity, 
and press for his attention. Upon the humble 
efforts of the reader depend eternal conse- 
quences. Jewels will be either garnered or 
wasted, and the nature thus cultivated will be 
your ruin or salvation. Filled with such con- 
ceptions of existence and destiny, can any 
sacrifices be wanting to your usefulness, any 
labors a weariness, or trials a discomfort ? 



THE END, 




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The Little Captain; or, Euling One's Own Spirit. 
Our Looking-Glasses. 

Hattie Hale's Likeness, and What it Taught Her. 
Cousin Eobert's Story. 
Katie and the Cup of Cold Water. 
Work und No Work. 
Constance and Carlie; or, "Faithful m that whicn rs E,ej»u 

THE WILLIE BOOKS. 

Five Volumes, l&mo. In a Box. Price, $3 00. 
Willie's Lessons. Willie Trying to be Thorough, 

Willie Trying to be Manly. Willie Wishing to be Useful. 

Willie Seeking to be a Christian. 



GLEN ELDER BOOKS. 

Five Volumes. In a Box. Price, $6 00,. 
The Orphans of Glen Elder. The Lyceum Boys. 

Francis Leslie. The Harleys of Chelsea Placs. 

Eosa Lindesay. 

LIBRARY FOR LITTLE LADS AND LASSES. 

Five Volumes. In a Box. Price, $3 00. 
Archie and his Sisters. Stories about the Little Ones. 
Archie and Nep. More Stories about the Little One*. 

The Fisher Boy's Secret. 

LYNTONYILLE LIBRARY. 

Four Volumes. In a Box. Price, $4 50. 
Life in Lyntonville. Fishers of Derby Haven. 

Miss Carrol's School. Grace's Visit. 

10VING HEART AND HELPING HAND LIBRARY 

Five Volumes. In a Box. Price, $5 50. 
Nettie and her Friends. An Orphan's Story. 

Philip Moore, the Sculptor. Carrie "Williams and her Scholars. 
The Story of a Moss-Eose. 

WINIFRED LEIGH LIBRARY. 

Four Volumes. In a Box. Price, $4 00. 
Winifred Leigh. In Self and Out of 8d£ 

The Captive Boy in Terra Del Fuego. Hetty Porter. 

LITTLE DOOR-KEEPER LIBRAhY. 

Five Volumes. In a Box. Price, §6 00. 
Little Door-Keeper. Captain Christie's Granddaughter 

Miracles of Heavenly Love in False Shame. 

Dailj Life. Joe Witless. 

MAUDE GRENVILLE LIBRARY. 

Five Volumes. In a Box. P>\ce, $G 00. 
Maude Grenville. Enoch Eoden's Training, 

Heroism of Boyhood. Victor and Hilaria. 

The Children of the Great Kin£. 



H 148 82 




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